Professor of Psychology
Associate Provost for Faculty

Cognition and Cognitive Neuroscience

Office: 221 Kirkland Hall
Phone: (615) 343-5242
Email:

Degrees

McNamara's research investigates human memory. One line of research investigates how spatial relations among objects in the environment are represented in memory, and how remembered spatial relations are used to guide navigation. Current experiments are examining the spatial reference systems used in memory to represent the locations of objects in the environment, how people update representations of their own location and orientation during locomotion, and aspects of spatial memories acquired from non-visual modalities, such as touch and movement. A second line of research uses priming paradigms (e.g., semantic priming, priming in item recognition) to examine mechanisms of retrieval in semantic and episodic memory. These issues are investigated with behavioral and functional neuroimaging methods.

McNamara, T. P. (2005) Semantic priming: Perspectives from memory and word recognition. New York: Psychology Press (200 pp).
McNamara, T. P., Diwadkar, V. A., Blevins, W. A., & Valiquette, C. M. (2006). Representations of apparent rotation. Visual Cognition, 13, 273-307.
Mou, W., McNamara, T. P., Valiquette, C. M., & Rump, B. (2004). Allocentric and egocentric updating of spatial memories. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 30, 142-157.
Mou, W.,Zhang, K., & McNamara, T. P. (2004). Frames of reference in spatial memories acquired from language. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 30, 171-180.
Shelton, A. L., & McNamara, T. P. (2004). Orientation and perspective dependence in route and survey learning. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 30, 158-170.
Shelton, A. L., & McNamara, T. P. (2004). Spatial memory and perspective taking. Memory & Cognition, 32, 416-426.