Keynote Speaker

The Cognition of Social Remembering: Implications for Individual and Collective Memory
Thursday, November 20 | 7:30 PM - 8:30 PM U.S. Mountain Time | Plaza Ballroom ABC
Captioning, as well as an American Sign Language (ASL) interpreter, will be available for this address.
This event will be recorded for on-demand viewing and made available post-event in December. 

Suparna Rajaram
Stony Brook University, USA
As social animals, humans have a deep need to connect with others, facilitated by sharing and transmitting information among social connections. We learn and remember with others, and we construct collective memory for the past. Yet, over a century of scientific experimental research has focused on the study of memory in individuals working alone. Cognitive research on memory in recent years has begun to focus on how sociality influences memory, and my research group leverages cognitive principles of individual memory to investigate these social influences. With this paradigm shift, we examine how individual memory shapes the performance of the group, and in turn, how collaborative remembering by a group reshapes the memory of each member and that of the collective. I will highlight research on questions that include how memory transmits in groups, how social transmission of information synchronizes memory across collaborating partners to shape individual and shared memories, and what role cognitive processes play in shaping such social influences on memory. This cognitive-experimental approach has the potential to offer insights into the impact of social transmission of memory on human thinking, decision making, behavior, and a range of socially relevant endeavors.

Photo Credit: Juliana Thomas

About Suparna
Suparna Rajaram currently serves as a Distinguished Professor of Psychology and has conducted influential research on memory transmission and collective memory in social networks. She is also a co-founder of Women in Cognitive Science, promoting gender equity in the field.

Rajaram studies human memory, with a particular interest in cognitive mechanisms that underpin memory transmission and collective memory in groups and social networks. Her earlier work on explicit and implicit memory contributed to major theories of memory. Rajaram has benefitted greatly from working with mentors, colleagues, and graduate student collaborators. Rajaram's research, supported by the NIMH (including the FIRST award), NSF, Russell Sage Foundation, and Google, includes an award-winning paper. More.

View a list of past keynote speakers.






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