Education

• Post-Doctoral Associate in Human Development and Human Neuroscience Institute, Cornell University (2012-2016)
• Ph.D. in Cognitive Neuroscience, The George Washington University (2012)
• B.A. in Biopsychology, Vassar College (2003)

Areas of Research

• The interplay between cognitive control and motivation in the context of health behaviors
• Individual differences in reward sensitivity and risky choice
• Neural mechanisms of risky decision making across development
• Neural mechanisms of cognitive control
• Individual differences in working memory capacity
• Cross-cultural differences in cognition

Selected Publications

Brust-Renck, P.G., Weldon, R.B., & Reyna, V.F. (2021). Judgment and Decision Making. In W.E. Pickren (ed.), The Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Psychology, Oxford University Press.

Tae, J., Almasi, R. C., Weldon, R. B., Lee, Y., An, C., & Sohn, M. H. (2021). Perceived conflict may be negative but resolved conflict is not. Brain and Cognition, 150, 105721.

Tae, J., An, C., Lee, Y., Weldon, R. B., Almasi, R. C., & Sohn, M. H. (2021). Cognitively demanding stimuli can acquire positive valence. Psychological Research, 1-12.

Tae, J., Nam, Y., Lee, Y., Weldon, R.B., & Sohn, M.-H. (2020). Neutral but not in the middle: Cross-cultural comparisons of negative bias of “neutral” emotional stimuli. Cognition & Emotion, 34:6, 1171-1182.

Widman, D.R., & Weldon, R.B. (2020). Intrasexually competing women do not differentially discount future appearance enhancing products. Evolutionary Psychological Science, 6, 270-282.

Reyna, V. F., Helm, R. K., Weldon, R. B., Shah, P. D., Turpin, A. G., & Govindgari, S. (2018). Brain activation covaries with reported criminal behaviors when making risky choices: A fuzzy-trace theory approach. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 147(7), 1094.

Garavito, D.M.N., Weldon, R.B., & Reyna, V.F. (2018). Fuzzy-trace theory: Judgments, decisions, and neuro-economics. In A. Lewis (ed.), The Cambridge Handbook of Psychology and Economic Behaviour.

Ishikawa, T., Jiang, A., Brussoni, M., Reyna, V., Weldon, R., Bruce, B., & Pike, I. (2017). Perceptions of injury risk associated with booster seats and seatbelts: the ejection stereotype hypothesis. Hypothesis Journal, 15(1), e1. doi:10.5779/hypothesis.v14i1.455

Meschkow, A.S., Nolte, J., Garavito, D.M.N., Helm, R.K., Weldon, R.B., & Reyna, V.F. (2017). Risk taking. In M.H. Bornstein (Ed.), The SAGE Encyclopedia of Lifespan Human Development.

Lee, D., Shin, H.J., Weldon, R.B., & Sohn, M.-H. (2016). Cross-cultural differences in consistent mapping effects of targets and distractors. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 47(4), 525-539.

Reyna, V.F., Corbin, J.C., Weldon, R.B., & Brainerd, C.J. (2016). How fuzzy-trace theory predicts true and false memories for words and sentences. Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jarmac.2015.12.003

Weldon, R.B., Corbin, J.C., Garavito, D.M.N. & Reyna, V.F. (2016). The gist is sophisticated yet simple: Fuzzy-trace theory’s developmental approach to individual differences in judgment and decision making. In M. Toplak & J. Weller (Eds.), Individual Differences in Judgment and Decision Making from a Developmental Context.

Corbin, J.C., Reyna, V.F., Weldon, R.B., & Brainerd, C.J. (2015).  How reasoning, judgment, and decision making are colored by gist-based intuition: A fuzzy-trace theory approach. Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition, 4(4), 344-355. doi:10.1016/j.jarmac.2015.09/001

Reyna, V.F., Weldon, R.B., & McCormick, M.J. (2015). Educating intuition: Reducing risky decisions using fuzzy-trace theory. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 24(5), 392-398.

Reyna, V.F., Wilhelms, E.A., McCormick, M.J., & Weldon, R.B. (2015). Development of risky decision making: Fuzzy-trace theory and neurobiological perspectives. Child Development Perspectives, 9(2), 122-127.

Weldon, R.B., & Reyna, V.F. (2015). How to successfully incorporate undergraduate researchers into a complex research program at a large institution. Journal of Undergraduate Neuroscience Education, 13(3), A192-A197.

Wilhelms, E.A., Reyna, V.F., Brust-Renck, P.G., Weldon, R.B., & Corbin, J.C. (2015). Gist representations and communication of risks about HIV-AIDS: A fuzzy-trace theory approach. Current HIV Research, 13(5), 399-407.

Brust-Renck, P.G., Reyna, V.F., Corbin, J.C., Royer, C.E., & Weldon, R.B. (2014). The role of numeracy in risk communication. In H. Cho, T. Reimer, & K. A. McComas (Eds.), The Sage Handbook of Risk Communication (pp. 134-145). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

Setton, R.A., Wilhelms, E.A., Weldon, R.B., Chick, C.F., & Reyna, V.F. (2014). An overview of judgment and decision making research through the lens of fuzzy-trace theory. Advances in Psychological Science, 22(12), 1837-1854.

Weldon, R.B., Corbin, J.C., & Reyna, V.F. (2013). Gist processing in judgment and decision making: Developmental reversals predicted by fuzzy-trace theory. In H. Markovits (Ed.), The Developmental Psychology of Reasoning and Decision-Making (pp. 36-62). New York: Psychology Press.

Weldon, R.B., Mushlin, H., Kim, B., & Sohn, M.-H. (2013). The effect of working memory capacity on conflict monitoring. Acta Psychologica, 142(1), 6-14.