Research
Current Research Projects
The impact of reward on category learning and decision making
Rewards significantly affect what options are sought, what information is given attention to, and what is stored in our memory. But whether the level of rewards also influences how well it can be learned to make correct decisions is still relatively unclear. This research examines how the level of rewards interacts with feedback on right and wrong decisions when learning a new decision-making task or category assignment.
Mathematical modeling of judgment processes, category learning and sequential decisions
We develop and test formal mathematical models of judgment, categorization, and decision-making. We use these models to make quantitative predictions about decision-making behavior and to understand how human behavior changes in different environments and task structures.
Age-related changes in decision-making behavior
Aging is accompanied by a series of cognitive, emotional, and motivational changes that also influence decision-making behavior. We are working on projects that examine how the role of social information in the decision-making process changes with age.
Process tracing of information search in memory
The search for information in memory usually eludes direct observation. The goal of this research project is to apply and develop a new method that examines the retrieval of information from memory based on the recording of eye movements. In particular, we explore the extent to which this method can be used to investigate what information people retrieve from memory during a decision.
Research Cooperations and Memberships
The Joint Research Center on Cooperative and Cognition-enabled AI (CoAI JRC) is Germany’s leading center for interdisciplinary research and innovation on cooperative and cognition-enabled artificial intelligence that features human-centered, embodied, and real-world agency in the sense that it is capable of acting together with humans in a meaningful and goal-directed manner.
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Minds, Media, Machines is an interdisciplinary network of researchers at the University of Bremen and of collaborators at national and international partner institutions. They are collaborating to advance our understanding of intelligence and cognition in autonomous agents and agent teams in the context of mediatized worlds.
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The Humans on Mars project is investigating ways to achieve sustainable human exploration of Mars in seven projects funded by the state of Bremen. The projects focus on human aspects, such as interaction and communication between humans and mixed human-machine teams, habitats and life support systems, and responsible extraction of local resources for in situ production of consumables and spare parts.
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EASE is an interdisciplinary research center at the University of Bremen that investigates everyday activity science and engineering. Its core purpose is to advance our understanding of how human-scale manipulation tasks can be mastered by robotic agents. To achieve this, EASE establishes the research area “Everyday Activity Science and Engineering” and creates a research community that conducts open research, open training, open data, and knowledge sharing.
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