91福利

Biography

Dr. Spaniol received her doctorate in cognitive psychology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and subsequently completed postdoctoral work at Duke University Medical Center and at the Rotman Research Institute at Baycrest in Toronto. Since 2007, Dr. Spaniol has directed the Memory and Decision Processes (MAD) lab in the Department of Psychology at 91福利. She held the Canada Research Chair (Tier 2, NSERC) in Cognitive Aging from 2014 until 2024.

Research in the MAD lab examines the interplay between cognition, emotion, and motivation, as well as age-related changes in these domains. Current research projects investigate (1) the impact of curiosity on information seeking, attention, and memory; (2) prosociality 鈥� thoughts and actions aimed at improving the welfare of others - and its consequences for information processing; and (3) human-AI interaction, specifically with respect to advice-taking and problem solving. The MAD lab uses a combination of behavioural and brain-based methods, including eye tracking, event-related potentials (ERPs), and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Current projects are supported by the Natural Science and Engineering Research Council, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, the Canada Foundation for Innovation, and the Ontario Research Fund.

Dr. Spaniol currently serves as Undergraduate Thesis Coordinator and teaches undergraduate and graduate courses related to cognitive psychology and cognitive neuroscience. She welcomes inquiries from people interested in getting involved in the MAD lab as research participants, volunteers, student researchers (BA, MA, and PhD), or external collaborators.

Selected recent publications (* indicates trainee):

Spaniol, J., Kara-Yakoubian, M.*, Dematagoda, S.*, Silver, M. P., Flora, D. B., & Szpunar, K. K. (provisionally accepted). Predictors of prosociality in older adulthood. Psychology and Aging.

Santacroce, L.A.*, Purohit, C. S.*, Carlse, K.A.*, Dyson, B. J., & Spaniol, J. (2026). Event-related potentials reveal age-related differences in sensitivity to positive and negative feedback from social and nonsocial sources. The Journals of Gerontology, Series B: Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences, 81(5), p.gbag047.

Dematagoda, S.*, Junaid, S.*, & Spaniol, J. (2025). Charitable and memorable? Probing the effects of prosocial decisions on face memory in younger and older adults. Aging, Neuropsychology, and Cognition, 32(6), 1067鈥�1089.

Swirsky, L.T.*, & Spaniol, J. (2024). Consequences of curiosity for recognition memory in younger and older adults. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 31(4), 1527鈥�1535.

Professional Affiliations

• Canadian Society for Brain, Behaviour, and Cognitive Science
• Cognitive Neuroscience Society
• Psychonomic Society
• Association for Psychological Science