Michael Osfeld

Graduate Student

Advisor

Research Area

Cognition, Perception, and Cognitive Neuroscience

Biography

I received my B.S. in Psychological & Brain Sciences from UC Santa Barbara in 2021. At UCSB, I worked in the TALE lab with Dr. Albada studying teachers' autobiographical storytelling. Soon after graduating, I was employed at the educational research company WestEd where I worked on large scale qualitative and quantitative studies. I now have a humble home in the Mayer lab exploring the intricacies of learning science! In non-academic life, I enjoy juggling more hobbies than I can manage such as making music, bouldering, and gardening.

Research

My research interests can be summed into a few core questions: 1) How do human learning systems work, and how can they be optimized? 2) How does improvisational intelligence guide our learning systems? 3) What are the evolved mechanisms underlying these processes? Our brains have the unique ability to engage in meaningful learning and transfer with information that is merely contingent. This is a trait few in the animal kingdom possess, none of which at the levels expressed by humans. I am interested in exploring how learning and transfer are enabled in these contexts, and how other cognitive phenomena such as working memory and mental representation may play a role in their success.