Prof. Dr. Beatrice G. Kuhlmann

• Cognitive Aging
• Episodic Memory (esp. source memory)
• Metamemory (esp. encoding strategies)
• Prospective Memory
• Multinomial Modeling of Cognitive Processes

• Workshop „Substantive SMiP Research Topics in Mannheim“

Ph.D. students are very welcome to devise their own thesis topic so long as it fits with my general research interests and expertise (see above and see my publications) and is compatible with the SMiP agenda (i.e. involves statistical modeling). Here are some exemplary thesis topics along with papers that might serve as a demonstration of the kind of research a topic may involve:

• Item versus source forgetting: Part of my DFG-funded Emmy Noether Research Group, projects on this topic investigate the fate of item and source memories in younger and older adults as time passes. Multinomial modeling of source monitoring (e.g., Kuhlmann, Bayen, & Vaterrodt, 2012) is employed and extended to precisely measure item and source memory forgetting rates and to also examine time-correlated changes in source guessing processes; the project will also focus on interventions to enhance source memory in older adults (e.g., Kuhlmann & Touron, 2012, 2017).
• Memory-task response biases as cognitive traits and states: Projects on this topic more closely examine the nature of and interindividual differences in guessing strategies on memory tasks, such as age-stereotype-biased source guessing (e.g., Kuhlmann, Bayen, Meuser, & Kornadt, 2016; see also Kuhlmann, Vaterrodt, & Bayen, 2012).
• Memory encoding versus retrieval processes: Projects on this topic focus on the disentangling of encoding versus retrieval processes in memory via different modeling methods and examine interindividual differences including age differences in these processes (e.g., Rummel, Marevich, & Kuhlmann, 2016).