SUNY Poly Assistant Professor of Cognitive Psychology Dr. Rebecca Weldon recently published “Stimuli with a positive valence can facilitate cognitive control” in Memory & Cognition, in collaboration with Dr. Jini Tae from Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology in South Korea; Dr. Yoonhyoung Lee from Yeungnam University in South Korea; and Dr. Myeong-Ho Sohn’s lab from the George Washington University in Washington, DC.

Drs. Tae and Weldon and colleagues found that a stimulus typically associated with a positive emotion facilitated cognitive control abilities. In other words, humans tend to perform at an optimal cognitive level when encountering a positive person, object, or event. This research has interesting implications for student learning in the classroom and productivity in the workplace.

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