EMILY E. DAVIS, Ph.D.

Postdoctoral Fellow, University of TorontoDepartment of Psychology

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ABOUT

I am a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Toronto under the supervision of Dr. Morgan Barense. I previously completed my PhD at Brock University under the supervision of Dr. Karen Campbell.By using both behavioural (including eye-tracking) and neuroimaging techniques, I study the role of attentional control in shaping how and what we remember. In particular, I study how these processes develop in children and change in aging. I am also interested in how atypical neurodevelopement or other health disorders may affect these processes.In my spare time: I like to hike, paddle board, cook, and chase my toddler around.I'm on the academic job market looking for tenure track professorships

HOW DOES ATTENTION SHAPE ASSOCIATIVE MEMORY ACROSS THE LIFESPAN ?Many previous studies have argued that children and older adults do worse on memory tasks because the memory mechanisms responsible for encoding and retrieving those memories are underdeveloped or degraded with age. My research challenges the traditional view that age-related memory decline reflects failures of memory mechanisms alone; instead, I propose that the critical factor lies in how attention affects memory.In this line of work, I use both behavioural and neuroimaging methods to explore how attentional factors influence performance on implicit and explicit memory tasks, the extent to which attention results in the erroneous formation of associations between targets and distractors ('hyper-binding'), and how sustained attention at encoding might influence memory for targets and distractors later.

HOW DOES MEMORY FOR NATURALISTIC, EPISODIC EVENTS CHANGE WITH AGE?When someone recalls the details of an event, such as a morning before work, they tend to explain what happened by relaying a series of smaller events (e.g., I walked my dog, ate breakfast). Influential models of event perception suggest that this recall pattern occurs because continuous experiences are automatically segmented into discrete units and stored in long-term memory as distinct events. Some work suggests that the ability to segment events into these units changes with age and might contribute to age-related deficits in episodic memory. However, many of the tasks that measure event segmentation require a secondary task during event encoding that might place differential task-demands on older adults. My work pushes against this argument and shows that when stimuli capture attention, and indirect measures of event segmentation are used, then older adults perform similarly to young adults.My research explores whether age-related memory differences persist when attention is engaged by naturalistic, meaningful stimuli or when indirect measures of event perception are used. In doing so, I've shown using eye-tracking that when using naturalistic stimuli, older adults attend to the same things during movie watching, recall the same number of details, and perceive event boundaries at the same time points as young adults.

HOW DO DIFFERENCES IN SENSORY INTEGRATION AFFECT MEMORY IN INDIVIUDALS WITH AUTISM?Just as attentional processes shape what information we remember, differences in how information is integrated over time also influence memory formation. Individuals with Autism tend to integrate sensory information over wider temporal windows than neurotypical individuals. I propose that this extended temporal integration may result in a form of hyper-binding that parallels what is observed in aging. In this research program, my goal is to test individuals with a range of support needs, including individuals with non-speaking autism as this population has been largely excluded from research.To address this, I have begun building the methodological foundation necessary to include individuals with NSASD in cognitive neuroscience research. This includes accessible behavioural experiments and new prospective motion correction neuroimaging techniques (see below) for both anatomical and functional neuroimaging.

CAN WE LEVERAGE MARKERLESS PROSPECTIVE MOTION CORRECTION IN FUNCTIONAL MAGNETIC RESONANCE IMAGING RESEARCH FOR USE IN SPECIAL POPULATIONS?In parallel, I investigate whether markerless prospective motion correction (PMC) can reduce one of the largest barriers in neuroimaging: head motion. This is especially critical for studying populations such as children and individuals with autism.Moving beyond proof-of-concept, I evaluate whether these systems are suitable for large-scale psychological research, examining both structural and functional imaging. To better understand the limits of PMC, I integrate convolutional neural networks to detect subtle facial movements (e.g., eye blinks, facial shifts) during scanning and relate these signals to motion correction performance.This work aims to identify when PMC succeeds, when it fails, and how it can be refined for real-world research applications.

HOW DO WE LEARN A NEW FACE?In many memory experiments, we use various types of stimulus categories for our research, and often, this includes faces. But, faces are a special and emotionally relevant stimulus that humans need to learn for a variety of social situations. So, how does an unfamiliar face become familiar? In this line of work, I've explored one potential mechanism that may underly face learning: ensemble coding (the rapid extraction of summary statistics). The visual system is remarkably efficient: it can rapidly extract the “average” of a group of faces, forming an ensemble representation of identity. This raises a key question: Can these summary representations support learning new individuals?Across multiple experiments with both young adults and children, I find that although the ability to form ensemble representations develops as early as 5-years-old and their representations are robust against various perceptual and memory manipulations, their generation may not sufficient for learning new identities. This work challenges the idea that the brain can rely on compressed, summary representations for identity learning, and instead points to a system that must balance generalization across variability with precision at the level of the individual.

Publications

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PEER REVIEWED PUBLICATIONS13. Thomas, H.G., El-Sabaa, L., Davis, E. E., Price, M.S., & Campbell, K.L. (in press). Aging and sustained attention: The role of inhibitory control and mind-wandering. Psychology and Aging.12. Davis, E.E., Thomas, H.G., Price, M.S. Mahy, C.E.V. & Campbell, K.L. (2025). Differential attentional demands on implicit and explicit associative memory in children 8 to 12 years old. Memory, 33 (5), 527-541.11. Fenerci, C., Davis, E.E., Henderson, S.E., Campbell, K.L., & Sheldon, S. (2024). Shift happens: Aging alters the content and organization of memory for complex memories. Aging, Neuropsychology and Cognition, 32 (1), 118-141.10. Campbell, K.L. & Davis, E.E. (2024). Hyper-binding: Older adults form too many associations, not too few. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 33 (5), 292-299.9. Davis, E.E., Tehrani, E.K., & Campbell, K.L. (2024). Some young adults hyper-bind too: Attentional control relates to individual differences in hyper-binding. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 31 (4), 1809-1820.8. Davis, E.E., Matthews, C.M., Mondloch, C.J. (2024). Ensemble coding of facial identity is robust, but may not contribute to face learning. Cognition, 243, 105668.7. Davis, E. E., & Campbell, K. L. (2023). Event boundaries structure the contents of long-term memory in younger and older adults. Memory, 31 (1), 47-60.6. Davis, E. E., Chemnitz, E., Collins, T.K., Geerligs, L., & Campbell, K.L. (2021). Looking the same, but remembering differently: Preserved eye-movement synchrony with age during movie-viewing. Psychology and Aging, 36 (5), 604-615.5. Davis, E.E., Foy, E.A., Giovanello, K.S., & Campbell, K.L. (2021). Implicit associative memory remains intact with age and extends to target-distractor pairs. Aging, Neuropsychology and Cognition, 28, 455-471.4. Davis, E.E., Matthews, C.M., & Mondloch, C.J. (2021). Ensemble coding of facial identity is not refined by experience: Evidence from other-race and inverted faces. British Journal of Psychology, 112, 265-281.3. Henderson, S.E., Lockhart, H.A., Davis, E.E., Emrich, S.M., & Campbell, K.L. (2020). Reduced attentional control in older adults leads to deficits in flexible prioritization of visual working memory. Brain Sciences, 10 (542), 1-17.2. Hafer, C., Drolet, C.E., Davis, E.E., Segalowitz, S.J., & Shulman, E.P. (2020). Evidence of a processing advantage for deservingness-relevant information. Social Psychology, 51 (2), 127-134.1. Matthews, C.M., Davis, E.E., & Mondloch, C.J. (2018). Getting to know you: The development of mechanisms underlying face learning. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 167, 295-313.

Contact me

University of Toronto
Department of Psychology
Sidney Smith Hall – Toronto, Ontario M5S 3G3[email protected]

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