Understanding how stress, emotion, and feedback affects learning across the lifespan encompass most of my current research interests.


As we get older the way we make choices change.  Research indicates that with age our goals shift and regulate our emotional state to accentuate positive information and attenuate negative information with direct effects seen in memory for and attention to emotional items (positivity bias).  My current research focuses on how the direct effects of the positivity bias indirectly affect categorization learning through emotional and logical feedback.

Marissa A. Gorlick

Graduate Student

Categorization and Decision Making Lab

The University of Texas at Austin 

Department of Psychology

1 University Station A8000

Austin, TX 78712

Email

Academic Family Tree

Research Interests

Mather, M. Mazer, N, Gorlick, MA, Lighthall, NR, Ariely, D. (In Press) Risk preferences and aging: The certainty effect in older adults’ decision making. Psychology and Aging.

Sakaki, M., Gorlick, M.A., & Mather, M. (2011).  Differential interference effects of negative emotional states on subsequent semantic and perceptual processing. Emotion, 11(6), 1263 -1278.  PDF

Worthy, D.A., Gorlick, M.A., Pacheco, J.L., Schnyer, D.M., & Maddox, W.T. (2011).  With Age Comes Wisdom: Decision Making in Younger and Older Adults.  Psychological Science, 22(11), 1375 -1380. PDF

Mather, M. Nashiro, K., Gorlick, M. A. Nga, L. (2010). Negative Emotional Outcomes Impair Older Adults’ Reversal Learning, Cognition and Emotion, 25, 1014 -1028.  Cognition & Emotion.  PDF

Mather, M., Lighthall, N. R., Nga, L., & Gorlick, M. A. (2010). Sex differences in how stress affects brain activity during face viewing. NeuroReport, 21, 933-937.  PDF

Lighthall, NR, Mather, M, & Gorlick, MA. (2009). Acute stress increases sex differences in risk seeking in the Balloon Analogue Risk Task. PLoS ONE.  PDF

Mather, M, Gorlick, MA, & Lighthall, NR. (2009). To brake or accelerate when the light turns yellow? Stress reduces older adults' risk taking in a driving game. Psychological Science, 20, 174-176.  PDF Driving game available here

Mather, M., Gorlick, M. A., & Nesmith, K. (2009). The limits of arousal's memory impairing effects on nearby information. American Journal of Psychology, 122, 349-370.  PDF

Publications

Gorlick, M.A., Darrell A. Worthy, Akram Bakkour, Jeanette Mumford, Russell A. Poldrack, & Maddox, W.T. (April, 2012). Age Differences in Neural Activation Affect Selection of Future Rewards. Poster presented at the Cognitive Neuroscience Society annual conference, Chicago, IL. PDF

Gorlick, M.A., Glass, B.D, Mumford, J., Zeithamova, D., Maddox, W.T., & Schnyer D.M.(November, 2011).  Modeling Critical Components of Prototype Learning: Modulation of Brain Activity Isolates Regions Associated with Discriminability and Strategy Shifting.  Poster presented at the Society for Neuroscience annual conference, Washington, DC.  PDF

Gorlick, M.A., Giguère, G., Glass, B.D., Nix, B.N., Mather, M. & Maddox, W.T. (April, 2011). How Age Differences in Emotion Regulation Can be Used to Attenuate deficits in Learning. Poster presented at the Cognitive Neuroscience Society annual conference, San Francisco, CA. PDF

Gorlick, M.A., Glass, B.D., Chotibut, T. & Maddox, W.T. (April, 2010). Emotional Feedback Affects Age-Related Declines in Cognitive Set Shifting. Poster presented at the Cognitive Neuroscience Society annual conference, Montreal, CA.  PDF

Mather, M., Gorlick, M, & Lighthall, N. (November, 2008). Stress reduces older adults' risk taking.    Paper presented at the 61st annual meeting of the Gerontological Society of America, National Harbor, MD.

Mather, M., Gorlick, M., & Kryla-Lighthall, N. (June, 2008). To brake or accelerate when the light turns yellow? Stress reduces older adults' risk taking. Poster presented at the 2nd annual Social & Affective Neuroscience conference, Boston, MA.

Kryla-Lighthall, N., Gorlick, M., Granger, D. A., & Mather, M. (May, 2008). Stress and emotional memory: Two stress systems with different effects? Poster presented at the 20th annual Association for Psychological Science conference, Chicago, Il.

Kryla-Lighthall, N., Gorlick, M., & Mather, M. (August, 2007). Stress improves memory consolidation for emotional material. Poster presented at the Summer Training on Aging Research Topics - Mental Health Program annual conference, San Diego, CA.

Kryla-Lighthall, N., Gorlick, M.A., & Mather, M. (2007). The ties that bind: The impact of stress on memory binding in aging. Summer Training on Aging Research Topics in Mental Health (START-MH) Fellowship Program. La Jolla, CA.

Posters

A Silver Lining: How Age Differences in Emotion Regulation Can Attenuate Learning Deficits (November, 2010).  Presented at the University of Texas at Austin Cognitive Systems Seminar.

Presentations

Darrell A. Worthy (left), Marissa A. Gorlick (center), and Akram Bakkour (right) at the Imaging Research Center.

Jessica A. Cooper (left) and Marissa A. Gorlick (right) at the Chicago Skydeck. Cognitive Neuroscience Society Annual Meeting, 2012.