Nancy S. Kim

Nancy S. Kim Assistant Professor 125 Nightingale (617) 373-3060 (office) (617) 373-8714 (fax) n.kim@neu.edu

Curriculum vitae (pdf)
Causal Cognition Lab Website

Research

My research focuses on causal reasoning, categorization, and decision making. Our lab group asks two major questions: first, how our causal and explanatory knowledge is mentally represented and organized, and second, how this representation affects basic cognitive processes such as categorization, reasoning, and memory. Previous research suggests that concepts are represented as abstract theories (e.g., theories about schizophrenia in general), yet other evidence also shows that concepts contain information tied to specific exemplars or instances (e.g., a patient with schizophrenia whom you saw yesterday). One line of my research program asks how these two types of information fit together in a coherent model of knowledge representation. The second seeks to uncover how causal knowledge representation affects categorization processes. This line of research seeks to map out specific and reliable mechanisms whereby a person’s causal knowledge of a concept influences categorization and reasoning.

I am especially interested in how causal information affects person categorization (i.e., disease and disorder diagnoses; stereotyping). Our lab group is currently studying how such knowledge about diseases and disorders affects decisions about diagnoses and treatment made by expert and novice clinicians and by lay people. We are also examining the explanatory-based categorization and reasoning processes underlying stereotyping and prejudice.

Frequently Taught Courses

• Cognition
• Seminar in Cognition
• Graduate Proseminar in Cognition