Dr. Cathy Clement
- Professor Emeritus
- Ph.D., Cognitive Psychology (1986), Clark University, Worcester, MA
- M.A. Cognitive Psychology (1982), Clark University, Worcester, MA
- A.B., Anthropology (1975), University of California, Berkeley
Contact Information
- Email: catherine.clement@eku.edu
Bio
I received my Ph.D. from Clark University in 1986. My research and publications have primarily concerned thinking with analogies. Analogies compare seemingly disparate concepts or events to reveal underlying similarities (e.g. electricity and water-flow; genes and language). Analogies play a significant role in scientific discovery and in education. My published research has concerned how people recognize that two situations are analogous, how people construct an analogical correspondence between two situations, the distribution of attention during analogical mapping, and how analogies affect understanding. I am currently examining how comparison to an analog affects the level of construal (abstract vs. specific) of a target situation. Sample publications include:
Clement, C. A., Harris, R. C., Burns, B. & Weatherholt (2010). An eye tracking analysis of the effect of prior comparison on attention during analogical mapping. Current Psychology, 29, 273-287.
Clement, C. A. & Yanowitz, K. (2003). Using an analogy to model causal mechanisms in a complex text. Instructional Science, 31,195-225.
I also have a second line of research that concerns decision-making about environmentally responsible behaviors. Jaime Henning, Richard Osbaldiston and I recently published research that examined factors that contribute to decision making and behavior related to energy conservation: Clement, C. A., Henning, J. B., & Osbaldiston, R. (2014). Integrating factors that predict energy conservation: The Theory of Planned Behavior and beliefs about climate change . Journal of Sustainable Development, 7.
My professional service activities include serving as a reviewer for a variety of journals in cognitive and educational psychology, and serving on the Program Committee for the Cognitive Science Society annual meeting.
At EKU one of my primary service commitments is to chair the Transportation Subcommittee of the Eastern Committee for Responsible Environmental Stewardship. The goal of our subcommittee is to improve the availability of alternative transportation options for members of the EKU community.
The undergraduate courses I teach include Statistics-Research Methods I, Cognitive Psychology, and Senior Research. I also teach two graduate courses: Cognition in the Workplace and the Cognitive Bases of Behavior. In the cognitive psychology classes we examine psychologists' investigations into how people think and learn. Cognitive psychologists ask questions about how people attend to their environment, how they store, organize, and retrieve knowledge in memory, how they reason, solve problems, and produce creative products. Students are asked to apply psychologist’s studies of cognition to explain the behaviors of themselves and others in their everyday lives. In the graduate Cognition in the Workplace class we specifically use cognitive psychology research to explain successes and errors in the workplace.
