Research Interests

Professor McDermott investigates human memory encoding and retrieval and how they interact. Her research uses both psychological and functional neuroimaging (fMRI) techniques. Ongoing projects include explorations of how memory is used to think about upcoming events (i.e., to simulate future episodes); why attempting to retrieve recently-experienced information enables the learner to gain more from a subsequent learning episode; and the contribution of regions within parietal cortex to encoding and retrieval.

Selected Publications

• McDermott, K. B., & Gilmore, A. W. (2015). The Role of Context in Understanding Similarities and Differences in Remembering and Episodic Future Thinking (Vol. 63, pp. 45–76). Elsevier. 

• Gilmore, A.W., Nelson, S.M., & McDermott, K.B. (2014, Advanced Access online). The contextual association network distinguishes between remembered and imagined events. Cerebral Cortex. 

• Nelson, S.M., Arnold, K.M., Gilmore, A.W. & McDermott, K.B. (2013). Neural signatures of test-potentiated learning in parietal cortex. Journal of Neuroscience, 33, 11754-11762.

• McDermott, K.B., Agarwal, P.K., D’Antonio, L., Roediger, H.L. & McDaniel, M.A. (2014). Both multiple-choice and short-answer quizzes enhance later exam performance in middle and high school classes. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, 20, 3-21. 

Courses

• Human Learning and Memory
• First Year Graduate Seminar