Paul Verhaeghen

writer

Most of the work in Paul Verhaeghen lab centers around cognitive aging: What happens to people's minds as they grow older? His claim is that there are predictable lines along which people age, which he believes are a function of at least two things: whether the task is verbal or visuo-spatial, and whether the task involves a high need for cognitive control in working memory or not. The lab's current experimental work focuses on the latter part: the cognitive control hypothesis. Cognitive control concerns dealing with complex tasks in a complex environment, which includes: making sure that only the appropriate stimuli from the environment enter into consciousness; continuously updating the content of working memory; switching between different tasks; coordinating the different actions that need to be performed; and switching back and forth between relevant stimuli.