Learning and Implicit Processes Lab
Principal Investigators:
Jan De Houwer
Post-Doctoral Researchers:
Yannick Boddez, Martin Finn, Sean Hughes, Marine Rougier, Pieter Van Dessel, Jamie Cummins
Doctoral Students:
Femke Cathelyn, Sarah Kasran, Matthias Raemaekers, Marie Delabie
Affiliated Members:
Prof. Agnes Moors
Head of the LIP lab research group
Research Interests
My research concerns the manner in which spontaneous (automatic) preferences are learned and can be measured. Regarding the learning of preferences, I focus on the role of stimulus pairings (evaluative conditioning). With regard to the measurement of preferences, I developed new reaction time measures and examined the processes underlying various measures. Other research interests include associative learning, learning via instructions, and stimulus-response compatibility. I am also interested in meta-theoretical issues such as the relation between cognitive and functional psychology (i.e., behaviorism).
Academic Bibliography
Research Interests
My research concerns learning principles and their application. I have, for example, studied the role of learning in (the reduction of) psychological suffering (e.g., anxiety, grief, insomnia / fatigue) and in art appreciation. Generalization and extinction are recurrent topics in this work.
Academic Bibliography
Research Interests
My research interests include analyses of complex behavior, relational responding, and how exploring these issues informs our understanding of applied domains. Other areas that contribute to forwarding my primary research interests include the procedural features of implicit measures, measurement and experimental manipulation of implicit attitudes, functional psychology and learning psychology.
Academic Bibliography
Research Interests
Academic Bibliography
Research Interests
My research interests are mainly about the measure of spontaneous preferences (such as approach and avoidance reactions) as well as on the modification of these preferences, that is, learning effects (e.g., approach/avoidance training, evaluative and attribute conditioning) and impression formation (e.g., spontaneous trait inferences). Relying on the feature transformation effect framework, my current research focuses more on how previous conceptual beliefs about features (and how they relate; e.g., trustworthiness and intelligence) can determine future learning effects.
Academic Bibliography
Research Interests
My research primarily concerns the manner in which spontaneous (implicit) preferences are learned and can be changed. I investigate effects of mere exposure, evaluative conditioning, and approach-avoidance training as well as effects of instructions and persuasive arguments. In each of these research lines, I focus on the role of propositional and inferential learning.
My work also aims at elucidating the mental mechanisms that underlie (implicit) evaluation. I focus on the relation between evaluation and memory processes. Other empirical interests include implicit cognition, learning psychology, cognitive control, and psychopathology.
Academic Bibliography
Research Interests
My research focuses on developing and using computerised training procedures, based on basic principles of learning, to train relational reasoning skills in children, typically-developed adults, and older adults with cognitive impairment and dementia. I examine whether training these skills can offer clinically-meaningful improvements in the cognitive performances of these groups (e.g., better performance at school for children, reduced cognitive decline in older adults). I am also interesting more generally in the psychology of learning, implicit measures, and the philosophy of science and language. I am a strong proponent of Open Science.
Academic Bibliography
Research Interest
Within psychological research and real world contexts, the most commonly used type of measure to examine and predict psychological attributes in individuals, are self-report measures (e.g. questionnaires). Yet, these types of measures have a few important limitations. Over the past twenty years, different kinds of implicit measures have been developed to overcome these limitations. Even though these implicit measures are used in a wide variety of studies and have provided valuable contributions to theory-driven research, it seems that there are hardly any instances in which these measurement procedures have proven their utility outside the academic world. Nevertheless, there are different reasons to assume that certain real world contexts could benefit from the use of implicit measures. This is why I am examining the utility of implicit measures in a wide variety of real world settings, ranging from smartphone use to road safety behaviour.
Other research interests include psychopathology and couple and family psychology.
Academic Bibliography
Research Interests
My research focuses on social learning, a broad term that refers to the many ways in which a person’s behavior can change as a result of observing other people when they interact with the environment.
Specifically, I study how and when observing the reactions of another person to a stimulus can influence your own response to that stimulus (e.g., whether you like or dislike it, fear it, or want to avoid it).
My doctoral project investigates the idea that this type of effect is mediated by propositional processes. Testing the predictions of this theoretical account can help us discover important moderators of the effects of observational learning (i.e., tell us under which conditions an observer’s behavior will or will not be influenced by the reactions of others). My other research interests include implicit cognition and the effects of persuasive arguments.
Academic Bibliography
Research Interests
My work at the LIPLab involves the study of learning from a functional psychological perspective. Currently, we are investigating complex learning effects (i.e., changes in behavior that are due to the joint effect of multiple regularities, or regularities in the presence of regularities, in the environment), including the functions that relations can have in relational learning effects and the moderators of these functions. I am also interested in the possible practical applications of this work on relational learning (e.g., relational training to increase scholastic aptitude or symbolic thinking in ASD), as well as implications for research in cognitive psychology. Furthermore, for my doctoral project, we aim to interface functional learning psychology with computational reinforcement learning models, to address the limitations of these models as well as suggest improvements, additions and predictions from a functional perspective.
Academic Bibliography
Research Interests
My research will focus on the use of relational training as a tool for the rehabilitation of cognitive impairment due to acquired brain injury (ABI). Many ABI patients experience several limitations in daily life, but most available cognitive training methods produce only limited improvements in functioning. Relational training has already shown promising effects on cognitive functioning in other contexts, so I will explore whether this approach may provide novel utility in the context of ABI.
Academic Bibliography
Research Interests
My internship at the LIPlab will focus on the effectiveness of training relational skills to enhance cognitive performance. Although so-called “brain trainings” are quite popular, there is still a lot of debate about whether these methods can actually increase intellectual capacities. I’ll be involved in Dr. Jamie Cummins’ research on the use of SMART (Strengthening Mental Abilities with Relational Training) training to reduce cognitive decline in older adults and I’ll explore the benefits of relational training in typically-developing adults.
Academic Bibliography
Research Interests
During my research internship my project will be placed within the context of the feature transformation effect framework. Specifically, I will deal with the question of whether spontaneous trait transference effects can be moderated by truth values and relational information and could therefore be understood as being mediated by propositions about stimulus relations instead of associations. Otherwise, my interests include complex learning and the relation between functional and cognitive psychology.
Academic Bibliography
Former members of the LIP lab
Senne Braem
Evelien Bossuyt
Evelyne Debey
Mieke De Clercq
Maarten De Schryver
Jeffrey De Winne
Tom Everaert
Anne Gast
Niclas Heider
Ian Hussey
Ariane Jim
Baptist Liefooghe
Valerie Maresceau
Simone Mattavelli
Gaetan Mertens
Agnes Moors
Tal Moran
Lies Notebaert
Sarah Opsomer
James Schmidt
Colin Smith
Adriaan Spruyt
Kristina Suchotzki
Helen Tibboel
Marijke Theeuwes
Jolien Vanaelst
Katrien Vandenbosch
Julia Vogt
Dorit Wenke
Riccardo Zanon
Visiting scholars
2007: Matt Field
2008: Jorg Huijding
2009: Helena Matute, Robert Balas
2011: Miguel Vadillo
2012: Bertram Gawronski
2013: Marco Perugini
2013: Mandy Hütter
2013-2014: Ayumi Tanaka
2015: Brian O'Shea
2015: Benedek Kurdi
2016: Juliane Scheill
2017: Christina Ffeuffer
2018: Marco Perugini
2019: Niels Kukken
2021: Catalina Bunghez, Florina Huzoaica, and Cristina Zogmaister