Dr. Lisa Blalock, associate professor, teaches research methods in psychology, professional development in psychology, and sensation and perception.

 Blalock conducts basic and applied research in visual and spatial working memory, which is a short-term mental storage that helps people remember and process visual and spatial information. 

Specifically, her research explores the processes involved in encoding, maintaining and retrieving visual information, and how those processes interact with visual selective attention, controlled attention and long-term memory. 

She is also interested in applying the basic principles of visual working memory to real-world situations, such as training and driving. Dr. Blalock was involved in a study, published in the "Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition," showing driving under a cognitive load, such as talking on a cell phone, led to diminished knowledge of moving, but not stationary objects in the scene.

She has written and co-written articles in peer-reviewed journals on various aspects of visual working memory. She recently published a study in the journal Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics, examining how training on specific shapes facilitated the consolidation of visual representations in working memory.

In addition to her research, she mentors undergraduate students in the Visual Cognition Lab by involving them in various types of projects that provide valuable research experience.

She received a bachelor鈥檚 degree in psychology from the University of Central Florida, and master鈥檚 and doctorate in cognitive psychology from Colorado State University.