Ben Reuveni

Current Research

My research has two main avenues of focus. The first aims to characterize the nature of Implicit and Explicit memory systems interactions both behaviorally and neurologically with the goal of developing effective training methods that allow expression of both systems where appropriate. A major focus of my research involves characterizing implicit mechanisms of learning and information processing, as well as methods of promoting them. In addition, my work investigates the so-called “cross-system credit assignment problem”. I am generally interested in the following questions:

1. How do implicit and explicit memory systems interact in order to produce behavior?
   1. What networks are involved in mediating the use of implicit / explicit strategies?
2. What strategies can be used to encourage people to rely on implicit processing while performing various tasks (e.g. categorization, real-world scenarios, etc.)?
3. How is feedback processed by each system? If your gut is right, but you didn’t listen to it, should it act as though it was right, or process the outcome feedback of your action?

In order to tackle these questions, we use behavioral paradigms, neuroimaging, and computational process-models of human category learning.

The second avenue of research is aimed at improving the current state of data acquisition in behavioral research. There currently exist several major limitations to behavioral research that does not rely primarily on survey data:

1. Most data currently comes from college student populations.
2. Most researchers are limited in how many participants they can recruit for a study.
3. The issue of replicability as well as data integrity

We aim to provide a solution for these problems by developing a stand-alone online platform for gathering millisecond timing, interactive behavioral experiments. This project allows researchers to interface with Amazon Mechanical Turk, as well as individual or group invitations handled by the researcher. We provide a mechanism for gathering and storing data in a secure and fully auditable platform that allows greater access to a more varied population from which to draw data.

*This project is in Beta testing and is called “Empirical”*

Select Presentations

“Modeling Memory Systems Interactions During the Development of Decision-Making Expertise” 2018
Society for Neuroscience (SfN), San Diego, CA.

“Cognitive Expertise by Repetition Enhanced Simulation-based (CERES) Training” 2018
Office of Naval Research: Human Performance Training & Education (HPT&E), Quantico, VA.

“PINNACLE 2.0 – A Theoretical Process-Model of Human Visual Category Learning” 2017
Cognitive Neuroscience Society (CNS), San Francisco, CA.

“Dissociating Explicit from Implicit Strategies in Two-Dimensional Category Learning” 2016
Cognitive Neuroscience Society (CNS), New York, NY.

Education

2014 – Present: M.A., Ph.D Graduate Student, Northwestern University

2012 – 2014: B.A. with highest honors in Psychology, University of California at Berkeley

2009- 2012: A.A. in Psychology, City College of San Francisco