Michigan Projects



This page is devoted to my work at the University of Michigan. Feel free also to look into my prior research from the University of Pennsylvania.


Working Memory and Attentional Capture

My primary work is on the influence of the contents of working memory on attentional capture. Through this ongoing project, we are investigating how attention moves from one representation to another in working memory, and also how the number of items in working memory affects the extent of attentional capture.

  • Moore, K.S., Sottile, M., Darling, E.F., Weissman, D.H. (2009) Target-colored distractors attract feature attention.
    Psychonomic Society Meeting, Boston, MA.
  • Moore, K.S., Lai, A., O'Moore, M.B., Chen, P., Weissman, D.H. (2009) Catch me if you can! Set switching increases the effects of contingent attentional capture.
    Vision Sciences Society, Naples, FL.
  • Moore, K.S., Weissman, D.H. (submitted) Involuntary transfer of a top-down attentional set into the focus of attention: Evidence from a contingent attentional capture paradigm.
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    Biasing Attention

    Using fMRI to assess sensory and prefrontal activity, we investigated how irrelevant cues can bias attention toward the wrong task. In our study, we presented visual cues telling paricipants to either listen or look for an upcoming target. Meanwhile, the participants heard irrelevant auditory instructions that were either congruent or incongruent to the visual cue. Subsequently, in both the headphones and on the screen we present targets simultaneously (sometimes congruent and sometimes incongruent.) A cue to attend to one modality elicited increased brain activity in the opposite modality when the cue was accompanied by incongruent distracting information, thus indicating that the attentional control network was disrupted by the auditory distractor word.

  • Moore, K.S., Porter, C.B., & Weissman, D.H. (2009) Made you look! Irrelevant commands hijack the attentional network.NeuroImage, 46(1), 270-279
  • Weissman D.H., Warner L., Woldorff M.H., Orr J.M., Moore K.S., & Porter C. (2008). Neural activity during multisensory processing: Attention makes a difference!
    Invited talk at the Endo-Neuro-Psycho Meeting 2008 Meeting, Doorweth, The Netherlands.
  • Moore, K.S., Porter, C., Weissman, D.H. (2008) Made you look! Irrelevant instructions hijack the attentional network.
    Cognitive Neuroscience Society, san Francisco, CA
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    Memory Mechanisms

    Another project I'm working on in the Jonides lab along with Marc Berman explores how working memory interference resolution differs for separate kinds of stimuli, including pictures, words, and pseudowords.



    Music Cognition

    In one of my first projects in the Jonides lab, our group looked into whether prior musical training has an influence on working memory and other cognitive control tasks.

    Franklin, M.S., Moore, K.S., Yip, C-Y., Rattray, K., Moher, J., & Jonides, J. (2008) The Effects of Musical Training on Verbal Memory. Psychology of Music. 36(3), 353-365

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