Dr. Adam Krawitz

Biography

Adam Krawitz is an Associate Teaching Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Victoria. His research focuses on the mental and neural bases of working memory, executive control, and decision-making using methods from computational cognitive neuroscience. He is deeply interested in how individuals dynamically modify their behavior in response to ongoing events in service of evolving goals. This behavior occurs over an intermediate time scale of seconds to minutes, which is slower than direct reactions to stimuli yet faster than the long-term learning of skills. For instance, consider a basketball player executing a called play who must remember the play while performing highly practiced skills in reaction to the opposition, or a short-order cook who tracks multiple orders while managing a list of items that need to be grilled. Krawitz studies this “mental operating system,” employing converging methods such as behavioral experimentation, computational modeling, and functional brain imaging to guide ongoing behavior.

Research Interests