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Aaron S. Benjamin

Professor

Primary Affiliation

Biologically Informed Artificial Intelligence

Affiliations

Status Affiliate Faculty

Home Department of Psychology

Phone 333-6822

Email asbenjam@illinois.edu

Address

  • Biography

    Aaron Benjamin received his Ph.D. from UCLA in 1998. He is an associate professor in the U of I Department of Psychology and a part-time faculty member in the Beckman Institute Cognitive Science group. His main areas of interest are human, animal, and artificial memory; computational representations of knowledge; applications of basic principles of learning in training environments; and memory in elderly and pathological human populations.

  • Research

    Every act of remembering involves more than just memory. Our research interests concern the host of cognitive processes that selectively search, evaluate, interpret, organize, revise, and prioritize memory stores. The goal of our research is to understand memory use in the larger context of skilled performance -- by specifying a minimal set of operations that operate in service of translating experience into memory, and vice-versa, and then exploring the flexibility of how these basic operations are used by the cognitive system as a whole. We believe that the remarkable flexibility of memory owes not to its inherent comprehensiveness nor to a particular wealth of operations that govern the encoding or retrieval of information, but rather to the subtle control processes that operate prior and subsequent to memory access.

  • 2014

    • Fraundorf, S. H.; Benjamin, A. S., Knowing the Crowd Within: Metacognitive Limits on Combining Multiple Judgments. Journal of Memory and Language 2014, 71, (1), 17-38, DOI: 10.1016/j.jml.2013.10.002.
    • Tullis, J. G.; Braverman, M.; Ross, B. H.; Benjamin, A. S., Remindings Influence the Interpretation of Ambiguous Stimuli. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review 2014, 21, (1), 107-113, DOI: 10.3758/s13423-013-0476-2.

    2013

    • Benjamin, A. S., Where Is the Criterion Noise in Recognition? (Almost) Everyplace You Look: Comment on Kellen, Klauer, and Singmann (2012). Psychological Review 2013, 120, (3), 720-726, DOI: 10.1037/a0031911.
    • Benjamin, A. S.; Tullis, J. G.; Lee, J. H., Criterion Noise in Ratings-Based Recognition: Evidence from the Effects of Response Scale Length on Recognition Accuracy. Journal of Experimental Psychology-Learning Memory and Cognition 2013, 39, (5), 1601-1608, DOI: 10.1037/a0031849.
    • Fraundorf, S. H.; Benjamin, A. S.; Watson, D. G., What Happened (and What Did Not): Discourse Constraints on Encoding of Plausible Alternatives. Journal of Memory and Language 2013, 69, (3), 196-227, DOI: 10.1016/j.jml.2013.06.003.
    • Hourihan, K. L.; Fraundorf, S. H.; Benjamin, A. S., Same Faces, Different Labels: Generating the Cross-Race Effect in Face Memory with Social Category Information. Memory & Cognition 2013, 41, (7), 1021-1031, DOI: 10.3758/s13421-013-0316-7.
    • Matzen, L. E.; Benjamin, A. S., Older and Wiser: Older Adults' Episodic Word Memory Benefits from Sentence Study Contexts. Psychology and Aging 2013, 28, (3), 754-767, DOI: 10.1037/a0032945.
    • McCarley, J. S.; Benjamin, A. S., Bayesian and Signal Detection Models, In The Oxford Handbook of Cognitive Engineering Lee, S. H., Kirlik, A., Eds.; Oxford, New York, 2013, 465-475.
    • Tullis, J. G.; Finley, J. R.; Benjamin, A. S., Metacognition of the Testing Effect: Guiding Learners to Predict the Benefits of Retrieval. Memory & Cognition 2013, 41, (3), 429-442.

    2012

    • Benjamin, A. S.; Diaz, M.; Matzen, L. E.; Johnson, B., Tests of the Dryad Theory of the Age-Related Deficit in Memory for Context: Not About Context, and Not About Aging. Psychology and Aging 2012, 27, (2), 418-428.
    • Finley, J. R.; Benjamin, A. S., Adaptive and Qualitative Changes in Encoding Strategy with Experience: Evidence from the Test-Expectancy Paradigm. Journal of Experimental Psychology-Learning Memory and Cognition 2012, 38, (3), 632-652.
    • Fraundorf, S. H.; Watson, D. G.; Benjamin, A. S., The Effects of Age on the Strategic Use of Pitch Accents in Memory for Discourse: A Processing-Resource Account. Psychology and Aging 2012, 27, (1), 88-98.
    • Tullis, J. G.; Benjamin, A. S., Consequences of Restudy Choices in Younger and Older Learners. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review 2012, 19, (4), 743-749.
    • Tullis, J. G.; Benjamin, A. S., The Effectiveness of Updating Metacognitive Knowledge in the Elderly: Evidence from Metamnemonic Judgments of Word Frequency. Psychology and Aging 2012, 27, (3), 683-690.

    2011

    • Benjamin, A. S., Age Differences in the Use of Beneficial and Misleading Cues in Recall: With a Comment on the Measurement of between-Group Differences in Accuracy. Experimental Aging Research 2011, 37, (1), 63-75.
    • Benjamin, A. S., Age Differences in the Use of Beneficial and Misleading Cues in Recall: with a Comment on the Measurement of between-Group Differences in Accuracy. Experimental Aging Research 2011, 37, (1), 63-75. 
    • Diaz, M.; Benjamin, A. S., The effects of proactive interference (PI) and release from PI on judgments of learning. Memory & Cognition 2011, 39, (2), 196-203. 
    • Evans, K. M.; Benjamin, A. S., Fluency and familiarity: How memory for perceptual detail influences the remembering of events. In Constructions of Remembering and Metacognition, Leboe, J.; Higham, P., Eds. Palgrave Macmillian: London, 2011. 
    • Finley, J. R.; Benjamin, A. S.; Hays, M. J.; Bjork, R. A.; Kornell, N., Benefits of accumulating versus diminishing cues in recall. Journal of Memory and Language 2011, 64, 289-298. 
    • Finley, J. R.; Brewer, W. F.; Benjamin, A. S., The Effects of End-of-Day Picture Review and a Sensor-Based Picture Capture Procedure on Autobiographical Memory Using Sensecam. Memory 2011, 19, (7), 796-807.
    • Matzen, L. E.; Taylor, E. G.; Benjamin, A. S., Contributions of familiarity and recollection rejection to recognition: Evidence from the time course of false recognition for semantic and conjunction lures. Memory 2011, 19, (1), 1-16.
    • Tullis, J. G.; Benjamin, A. S., On the effectiveness of self-paced learning. Journal of Memory and Language 2011, 64, (2), 109-118.

    2010

    • Hourihan, K. L.; Benjamin, A. S., Smaller is better (when sampling from the crowd within): Low memory span individuals benefit more from multiple opportunities for estimation. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition 2010, 36, 1068-1074.
    • Benjamin, A. S., Representational Explanations of "Process" Dissociations in Recognition: The DRYAD Theory of Aging and Memory Judgments. Psychological Review 2010, 117, (4), 1055-1079. 
    • Benjamin, A. S.; Ross, B. H., The causes and consequences of reminding. In Successful Remembering and Successful Forgetting: A Festschrift in Honor of Robert A. Bjork, Benjamin, A. S., Ed. Psychology Press: New York, NY, 2010; pp 71-88. 
    • Benjamin, A. S.; Tullis, J., What makes distributed practice effective? Cognitive Psychology 2010, 61, (3), 228-247. 
    • Finley, J. R.; Tullis, J. G.; Benjamin, A. S., Metacognitive control of learning and remembering. . In New Science of Learning: Cognition, Computers, Collaboration in Education, Khine, M. S.; Saleh, I., Eds. Springer: New York, 2010; pp 108-132. 
    • Fraundorf, S. H.; Watson, D. G.; Benjamin, A. S., Recognition memory reveals just how CONTRASTIVE contrastive accenting really is. Journal of Memory and Language 2010, 63, (3), 367-386. 

    2009

    • Sahakyan, L.; Waldum, E. R.; Benjamin, A. S.; Bickett, S. P., Where is the forgetting with list-method directed forgetting in recognition? Memory & Cognition 2009, 37, (4), 464-476.
    • Benjamin, A. S.; Diaz, M.; Wee, S., Signal Detection With Criterion Noise: Applications to Recognition Memory. Psychological Review 2009, 116, (1), 84-115.
    • Konopka, A. E.; Benjamin, A. S., Schematic knowledge changes what judgments of learning predict in a source memory task. Memory & Cognition 2009, 37, (1), 42-51.
    • Matzen, L. E.; Benjamin, A. S., Remembering words not presented in sentences: How study context changes patterns of false memories. Memory & Cognition 2009, 37, (1), 52-64.

    2008

    • Benjamin, A. S., Continuity and discontinuity in learning. Sage Publishing: Thousand Oaks, CA, 2008.
    • Benjamin, A. S., Diaz, M., Measurement of relative metamnemonic accuracy. Psychology Press: New York, New York, 2008.
    • Benjamin, A. S., Ross, B. H., Introduction and Overview. In The Psychology of Learning and Motivation: Skill and Strategy in Memory Use, Benjamin, A. S., Ross, B.H., Ed. Academic Press: London, 2008; Vol. 48, pp xi-xiv.
    • Benjamin, A. S.; Ross, B. H., The Psychology of Learning and Motivation: Skill and Strategy in Memory Use Academic Press: London, 2008; Vol. 48.
    • Guadagnoli, M.; Benjamin, A. S.; de Belle, S.; Etnyre, B.; Polk, T., Human Learning: Biology, Brain, and Neuroscience. Elsevier: Holland, 2008.
    • Matzen, L. E.; Federmeier, K. D.; Benjamin, A. S., Wide open spaces: ERPs reveal the role of reminding in memory. Psychophysiology 2008, 45, S72-S72.

    2006

    • Benjamin, A. S. The effects of list-method directed forgetting on recognition memory. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review 2006, 13, (5), 831-836.
    • Christensen, B. K.; Girard, T. A.; Benjamin, A. S.; Vidailhet, P. Evidence for impaired mnemonic strategy use among patients with schizophrenia using the part-list cuing paradigm. Schizophrenia Research 2006, 85, (1-3), 1-11.

    2002

    • Kester, J. D., Benjamin, A. S., Castel, A. D., and Craik, F. I. M. (2002), "Memory in the Elderly," in A. Baddeley, B. Wilson, and M. Kopelman, eds., Handbook of Memory Disorders (2nd Edition), (Wiley).

    1998

    • Benjamin, A. S.; Bjork, R. A.; Hirshman, E. Predicting the Future and Reconstructing the Past: A Bayesian Characterization of the Utility of Subjective Fluency. Acta Psychologica 1998, 98, 267-290.