Matthew Wisniewski
Assistant Professor
Auditory learning has fascinated me for a long time. Before pursuing science, I had spent years trying to learn the skills necessary to become a sound engineer/musician. As my attempts began to fail, I became more and more curious of how experiences impact auditory skills. I received my Ph.D. in the Neural and Cognitive Plasticity lab at SUNY Buffalo while conducting research on this question. Afterwards, I did a postdoc at in the Battlespace Acoustics Branch of the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory in which I incorporated EEG methods into Air Force relevant auditory cognition studies. Over the years, I have developed an inter-disciplinary research program on auditory learning and cognition that employs a variety of methods with collaborators in multiple scientific disciplines (e.g., Psychology, Neuroscience, Engineering, Audiology). In August of 2018, this research program moved to K-State.
Alexandria Zakrzewski
Research Assistant Professor
While in college, I became preoccupied with problems related to "how we know we know and do not know", i.e., metacognition ("cognition about cognition"). In graduate school at the University at Buffalo (SUNY), I studied metacognition from a comparative perspective, testing uncertainty monitoring in humans and rhesus macaques. I did my postdoctoral work at the University of Richmond, exploring effects of aging on metacognitive ability. Recently, I have focused on how individuals’ confidence judgments predict performance accuracy during psychophysical discrimination and memory tasks as well as exploring neural correlates of confidence using EEG. In the ALC lab at K-State, I continue this work by examining effects of learning on metacognitive ability.
CJ Joyner
Graduate Student
Email: cnjoyner@ksu.edu
I’m a first year graduate student in the Cognitive Psychology program. I am currently studying under Dr. Wisniewski looking into auditory perception using the EEG system. I am interested in how masking affects auditory stimuli after training and how this can relate back to learning mechanisms. My future plans include continuing research in the auditory perception realm, possibly dabbling in multimodal perception, and eventually becoming a professor of Psychology.
Michael Tollefsrud
Graduate Student
Email: matollef@ksu.edu
Michael is a first-year student in the Cognitive Psychology graduate program with general research interests in perception and emotion. Michael is currently working with Dr. Wisniewski on a novel pitch matching task and plans to continue working in perception research after getting his degree.
Raelynn Slipke
Undergraduate Research Assistant
Raelynn is majoring in Psychology and is a pre-occupational therapy student. After graduation, she plans to attend KU Medical Center in Kansas City for graduate school. After graduating, she hopes to open a pediatric physical, speech, and occupational therapy clinic.
Jenny Amerin
Undergraduate Research Assistant
Jenny is studying Psychology and pursuing a minor in Human Development and Family Studies. After graduation, she plans to attend Kansas State University for the Couples and Family Therapy Master's program.
Molly Killilea
Undergraduate Research Assistant
Molly is studying Communication Sciences and Disorders with a minor in Human Development and Family Science. After graduating, she plans to attend Saint Mary's College in South Bend, IN for a master's in Speech Pathology. Molly hopes to work as a medical speech language pathologist in her future career and is interested in helping with patients recovering from TBI, stroke, and more.
Lexy Anguiano
Undergraduate Research Assistant
I am a psychology major here at K-State. I am very interested in abnormal psychology- specifically cognitive disorders. After graduation I plan to join the Air Force, where I will pursue the position of a therapist. My ultimate goal is to be a psychiatrist in the military, specializing in therapy for veterans.
John Pagen
Undergraduate Research Assistant
John is majoring in Psychology. After graduating he plans to pursue graduate school to become a clinical psychologist. In his spare time he enjoys making, mixing and mastering music. He is interested in auditory learning and hopes to run his own study before graduation.
Affiliate Members
Destiny Bell
EEG Core Graduate Research Assistant
I'm a second year graduate student in the cognitive psychology program. I assist Dr. Wisniewski with data processing and analyses for his laboratory. I also help undergraduates in his lab do data processing and data collection. I primarily study how people use strategies keep information in memory while doing secondary tasks. I am interested in neural signatures associated with learning and memory failures.
I became interested in EEG research four years ago when I realized how EEG is used to measure underlying processes in the brain. We can see a person fail to remember information, but what is going on in their brain when that failure occurs? These are the questions my research line aims to uncover.
Former Members
Frances Guffy
Undergraduate Research Assistant
Michelle Wheeler
Undergraduate Research Assistant
Kayla Cossins
Undergraduate Research Assistant
Bailey Herring
Undergraduate Research Assistant
Shay Quigley
Undergraduate Research Assistant
Emma Harmon
Undergraduate Research Assistant