Brennan R. Payne, Ph.D.

Research Interests

Research in my lab is centered on understanding the nature of language and memory systems across the adult lifespan, how these systems are modulated by attentional control, and the functional organization of these systems in the human brain. We take an interdisciplinary approach to this work, merging theoretical models from the cognitive and neural sciences, gerontology, linguistics, and quantitative and experimental psychology, as well as adopting a multi-method approach including the non-invasive measurement of brain activity (e.g., event-related brain potentials), human performance (e.g., eye-movement control), and physiology (e.g., pupillometry).

 Research topic interests in the lab range across a number of fields including: Cognitive and brain aging, sentence processing, semantic memory, working memory, cognitive electrophysiology, eye-movement control, intraindividual variability, cognitive interventions, prosodic segmentation, and advanced statistical modeling.

Opportunities For Students

Interested in joining the lab? Contact me for information about opportunities at the undergraduate level.

1. Undergraduate: Research assistants, honors thesis students, and human factors certificate program.
2. Graduate: Will be accepting applications for this coming academic year
3. Postdoctoral: NOT taking a new student this coming year.

Education

PhD, University of Illinois, 2014

MS, University of Illinois, 2012

BA, SUNY Oswego, 2009

Selected Publications

Silcox, J. W., Mickey, B., & Payne, B. R. (2023). Disruption to left inferior frontal cortex modulates semantic prediction effects in reading and subsequent memory: Evidence from simultaneous TMS‐EEG. Psychophysiology, e14312.

Payne, B.R., Silcox, J.W., Crandell, H.A., Lash, A., Ferguson, S.H., & Lohani, M. (2022). Text captioning buffers against the effects of background noise and hearing loss on memory for speech. Ear and Hearing, 43, 115-127.

Silcox, J.W., & Payne, B.R. (2021). The costs (and benefits) of effortful listening on context processing: A simultaneous electrophysiological, pupillometry, and behavioral study. Cortex, 142, 296-316.

Payne, B.R., Stites, M.C., & Federmeier, K.D. (2019). Event-related brain potentials reveal how multiple aspects of semantic processing unfold across parafoveal and foveal vision during sentence reading. Psychophysiology, 56, 1-15.

Payne, B.R. & Federmeier, K.D. (2017). Pace yourself: Intraindividual variability in context use during reading revealed by self-paced event-related brain potentials. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 29, 837-854.