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 will involve characterizing implicit mechanisms of learning and information processing, as well as methods of promoting them. I am generally interested in the following questions:

1. How do implicit and explicit memory systems interact in order to produce behavior?
2. What brain structures are involved in mediating the use of implicit / explicit strategies?
3. What strategies can be used to encourage people to rely on implicit processing while performing various tasks (e.g. categorization, real-world scenarios, etc.)?

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 late Alpha testing and is called “Empirical”*

Presentations

Reuveni, B., Ivys-Louter, C., Reber, P.J., Dissociating Explicit from Implicit Strategies in Two-Dimensional Category Learning,. April, 2016. Cognitive Neuroscience Society (CNS)

Reuveni, Ben & Crossley, Matthew J. Implicit and Explicit Mechanisms of Unstructured Category Learning. May, 2014. American Psychological Society.

Education

2014 – Present: 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