Affective Cognitive Neuroscience Lab

Post-Doctoral Fellow

My PhD research, in the lab of Nilli Lavie at University College London, examined factors determining susceptibility to forms of distraction common to daily life (e.g., distraction by salient yet task-irrelevant external stimuli or by task-unrelated thoughts). My particular focus was the relationship between individual differences factors (e.g. in working memory capacity) and task-based factors (e.g. the level of perceptual and working memory load). My current research with Sonia Bishop specifically focuses on the greater susceptibility to distraction typically found in individuals high in anxiety. The case of anxiety provides an opportunity to study the way in which "top-down" (e.g., in frontal control functioning) and "bottom up" (in amygdala responsivity) individual differences interact to determine susceptibility to distraction.

Publications:

Forster, S., Lavie, N. Harnessing the wandering mind: High perceptual load minimizes task-unrelated thoughts. Cognition, 111 (3), 345-355.
Forster, S., Lavie, N. (2008). Failures to Ignore Entirely Irrelevant Distractors: The Role of Load. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied. 14, 73-78.
Forster, S., Lavie, N. (2008). Attentional capture by entirely irrelevant distractors. Visual Cognition. 16(2-3), 200-214
Forster, S., Lavie, N. (2007). High perceptual load makes everybody equal: Eliminating individual differences in distractibility with load. Psychological Science. 18(5), 377-382.

E-mail: sforster-at-berkeley.edu

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