Cognition in Context Lab (Munakata)
Our research integrates behavioral testing (including eye-tracking and pupillometry), computational modeling, and neuroimaging (including ERP and fMRI), to investigate how thinking changes across contexts and to explore the implications for intervention. Most of our projects are conducted at the Center for Mind and Brain.
Full Lab Website
Research Topics
Developing Inhibitory Control
The ability to exert inhibitory control over our actions, thoughts, and emotions is essential in life. This ability develops gradually, predicts important life outcomes, and is impaired in many clinical disorders. This project investigates the mechanisms that support the development of inhibitory control, and their implications for targeted intervention, through experimental studies with children and tightly integrated computational modeling
Developing Adaptive Coordination of Executive Functions
Executive functions are the goal-directed processes that support flexible adaptation of behavior in response to changing circumstances. Executive functions are diverse, each with relative costs and benefits, indicating the need for individuals to adaptively coordinate distinct forms of executive function, and highlighting the potential importance of this coordination process in development, life outcomes, and disorders. This project thus investigates how forms of executive function are adaptively coordinated across development to match ongoing demands and how this process relates to real-world functioning, highlighting fundamental but under-explored aspects of executive function and its development.
