Haley Bennett researches distractions in visual learning

Cognitive psychology master’s and Ph.D. student Haley Bennett, ‘26G, ‘29G, has proposed a research study to better understand how students’ brains process information amid distractions.

Bennett’s ongoing experiment uses electroencephalograms and eye tracking to examine mechanisms within spatial attention — the process of focusing on specific locations to help recall where information was stored.

Rory Ferguson, ‘30G, a cognitive psychology graduate student, said this type of research helps improve the understanding of how people manage attention.

Ferguson said modern distractions have become an obstacle in educational settings, particularly following COVID. She said research like Bennett’s can help identify ways to work around these distractions. 

Bennett said her research focuses on how spatial attention may serve as a mechanism for working memory prioritization. She works with Nancy Carlisle, an assistant professor of psychology at Lehigh, whose research focuses on visual attention and working memory.

Bennett said her path to graduate school was somewhat unconventional.

She said she didn’t immediately pursue her Ph.D. after earning undergraduate degrees in psychology and criminal justice. Instead, she worked for a year at the Department of State in Washington, D.C. before earning a master’s degree in forensic psychology. 

“Ultimately, I have always been interested in the brain itself,” Bennett said. “Within visual tasks, it is noted across research that in order for something to be in working memory, we first have to attend to it.” 

After her time at the Department of State, Bennett said she worked as an adjunct professor, where she developed an interest in cognitive psychology.

“Being a director at a day school allowed me to realize that I really liked how everyone has a different mind and how everyone acts different ways, but ultimately that starts with what they first hear and how they initially react to that,” she said. “That sparked all types of curiosity. So, I began reading and researching to try and find my niche.”

Bennett said as a teaching assistant at Lehigh and a professor at a local community college, her focus on spatial attention developed through reading research, particularly studies on how people verbally rehearse information.

“When thinking about this research, an example that may be helpful is when a student is taking an exam they often look up to the projector screen or the whiteboard where that information previously was,” she said. “Is the specific spatial location allowing for the recall of information? Could it be as simple as revisiting the location information that was originally encoded to spark a memory?”

Bennett said she’s in the preliminary stages of data analysis and hasn’t yet examined the significance of her findings but is eager to see the results.

“I ran a lot of my participants personally during the eye tracking, so it was really neat to see different strategies and what the students or participants were saying that they were doing,” she said.

Bennett said her research has primarily included first-year students so far, and she hopes to expand to other groups in the future.

Matthew Tong, ‘27G, a cognitive psychology graduate student, said understanding how the brain handles distraction is important. He said constant competition for attention makes it important to understand why people become distracted and how they can maintain focus, especially in the current environment. 

Tong also said research on attention and memory is valuable in educational settings because it can help keep students engaged and focused in the classroom.

Ferguson said she was inspired by Carlisle’s work in visual attention and memory to pursue her masters.

“By knowing how we’re able to filter out different types of distractors, we are better able to direct our attention and, with goal-directed search work around everyday distractors,” Ferguson said.