Laura Edelman, Ph.D.
Professor
Cognitive Psychology, Sensation & Perception
Moyer Hall - Room 219
[email protected]
484.664.3426
Fax: 484.664.5627
Background
B.A., University of California, Riverside; M.A., Ph.D., University of Oregon
Dr. Edelman teaches courses about cognitive psychology, statistics, advanced research, music perception, creativity, and sensation and perception.
I am a Cognitive Psychologist with a specialization in Perception. My research interests have changed over the years but currently I am pursuing three lines of research. One line of research is on music perception. We have looked at emotional responses to music and factors, such a memories, that can influence your emotional response to a piece of music. We have also compared musicians to no-musicians in responding to music, recalling music, and the degree to which music is distracting from other tasks (such as studying). A second line of research is on how music influences social bonding. Music is used in all cultures in social situations. Musicologists have theories that music evolved to support social bonding. But what is it about music that influences social bonding? Is it the emotional response? (no) Is it that we can more easily synchronize our movement when music is playing? (maybe) Or is there something else about music that makes it such a powerful bonding agent? A third line of research is based on a project that a group of students did in my CUE Advanced Research course. We are looking at how punctuation and emoticons can change the interpretation of text messages: I will be leaving out periods and exclamation points from all future text messages
