Jordan Gunn successfully defends dissertation
Jordan Gunn passed his PhD dissertation defense under the direction of Sean Polyn, PhD, on August 19th, 2025. Congratulations, Dr. Gunn! His thesis, “Same Item, Distinct Contexts: Episode-Specific Reinstatement in Free and Serial Recall” makes substantial contributions to our understanding of human memory. This work examines (among other things) how repeated experiences are stored in memory: Do the different experiences blend together, or are they stored in distinct memory traces? Jordan developed novel computational models and analysis techniques to demonstrate that in many cases, repeated experiences seem to be stored separately, which contrasts with the predictions of dominant models of human memory search.