Background
Dr. Holly Westfall is a human factors consultant with extensive expertise in cognitive science, with a focus on cognitive abilities, memory, and decision making. She holds a B.S. in Psychology from the University of Florida, an M.A. in Psychology from the University of South Florida, and an M.S. and Ph.D. in Cognitive Sciences from the University of California, Irvine. Her graduate work focused on studying the effects of both healthy aging and the effects of Alzheimer’s disease on cognitive performance.
Dr. Westfall has over a decade of experience in behavioral research, including designing and conducting experiments, collecting behavioral and physiological data, analyzing archival data, conducting field research, and working with mathematical models of cognition. She has extensive experience with a large range of standard and advanced statistical methods and research software. She has also published multiple papers in peer-reviewed journals and presented research at major professional conferences.
Education and Certifications
- Cognitive Sciences, Ph.D.: University of California, Irvine (2023)
- Cognitive Sciences, M.S.: University of California, Irvine (2021)
- Psychology, M.A.: University of South Florida (2013)
- Psychology, B.S.: University of Florida (2007)
Associations and Memberships
- Society for Mathematical Psychology
- Cognitive Science Society
- Australian Society for Mathematical Psychology
Publications
- Westfall, H.A., and Lee, M.D. (2024). “An extension and clinical application of the SIMPLE model to the free recall of repeated and semantically related items”, Computational Brain & Behavior, 7, 65-79.
- Westfall, H.A. (2023). “Using memory models to understand cognitive impairment associated with Alzheimer’s disease” (Dissertation).
- Westfall, H.A., and Lee, M.D. (2022). “A model of free recall for multiple encounters of semantically-related stimuli with an application to understanding cognitive impairment”, In J. Culbertson, A. Perfors, H. Rabagliati, and V. Ramenzoni (Eds.), Proceedings of the 44th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society. Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society.
- Thomas, B., Coon, J., Westfall, H. A., and Lee, M. D. (2021). “Model-based wisdom of the crowd for sequential decision-making tasks”, Cognitive Science, 45(7).
- Van Doorn, J., Westfall, H. A., and Lee, M. D. (2021). “Using the weighted Kendall’s distance to analyze rank data in psychology”, Tutorials in Quantitative Methods for Psychology, 17(2), 154-165.
- Westfall, H. A., and Lee, M. D. (2021). “A model-based analysis of the impairment of semantic memory”, Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 25(8), 1484-1494.
- Westfall, H. A., and Lee, M. D. (2021). “A model-based analysis of changes in the semantic structure of free recall due to cognitive impairment”, In T. Fitch, C. Lamm, H. Leder, and K. Teßmar-Raible (Eds.), Proceedings of the 43rd Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society. Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society.
- Dubé, C., Tong, K., Westfall, H. A., and Bauer, E. (2019). “Ensemble coding of memory strength in recognition tests”, Memory & Cognition, 47(5), 936-953.
- Braithwaite, H., Lavery, T., Westfall, H. A., and Turner, S. (2017). “Parole agent workload study”, Center for Evidence-Based Corrections. (Technical Report).
- Annis, J., Lenes, J. G., Westfall, H. A., Criss, A. H., and Malmberg, K. J. (2015). “The list-length effect does not discriminate between models of recognition memory”, Journal of Memory and Language, 85, 27-41.
- Westfall, H. A., and Malmberg, K. J. (2013). “Visual search enhances subsequent mnemonic search”, Memory & Cognition, 41(2), 167-175.