Sander Los
Dr. Sander A. Los, Assistant Professor
What fascinates you in the area of Cognitive Neuropsychology?
Over the past decades, we have learned a lot about mental processes from measuring reaction times in simple reaction tasks. Additional measurements of brain potentials or functional MRI have enhanced our knowledge about the implementation of these processes in the brain. The challenge remains to integrate this knowledge into a cognitive architecture that describes how elementary mental processes operate in concert, thus enabling skillful human performance. To this end, Cognitive Neuropsychologists have developed inferential methods that enable critical tests of specific cognitive architectures on the basis of experimental data. I think this is a fascinating and promising approach, which may significantly contribute to the integration of the field in the years to come.
What are recent accomplishments in your research?
In my research I have focused on an elementary process, known as nonspecific preparation. This process corresponds to the preparatory process of an athlete who prepares for action to the "starting" signal when primed by the "ready" signal. Simulations of this process in the laboratory, using simple key press tasks, have revealed that the reaction time to the starting signal is influenced by the duration of the preparation interval on both the present trial and the immediately preceding trial(s). On the basis of these findings I have characterized nonspecific preparation as an unintentional process driven by associative learning rules.
What are you working on at the moment?
Recently I have broadened my view on nonspecific preparation by addressing the question how this process develops relative to other mental processes. I have become excited about the inferential power of what I call the underadditive-factor method, which provides a window on nonspecific preparation as it develops in parallel with elementary processes involved in the perceptual analysis of stimuli. My major conclusion so far has been that the development of nonspecific does not stop when the starting signal is presented but continues in parallel with the perceptual analysis of the starting signal to support a process occurring later in time.
