Research Interests

Working memory

Working memory is assumed to be involved in several central cognitive functions, among them "simultaneous storage and processing" of information, supervision of ongoing processes (so called "executive" functions), inhibition of no longer relevant information elements and task sets, and coordination of information into new structures (holding several elements ready for immediate access and construct relations between them).

At the same time, working memory capacity is thought of as a limited resource. Increasing task complexity results in increasing demands on this resource, leading to reduced performance. The precise nature of the capacity limit (or limits) for cognitive functions, however, are as yet not defined precisely. This implies that the factors that contribute to a task's complexity are not well understood. The main goal of my work on working memory is to characterize what functions are limited by working memory capacity restrictions and how this affects tasks with varying amounts of and different kinds of complexity.

Deductive Reasoning

I am interested in how people construct, integrate, and use mental models in deductive reasoning tasks with spatial relations (e.g., "the triangle is on the left of the square; the circle is on the right of the triangle"), syllogisms (e.g., "All psychologists are stupid; some Germans are psychologists - what follows?") and conditional reasoning (e.g., "If a psychologist works in Potsdam, she studies reasoning. Niki studies reasoning - does it follow that she works in Potsdam?"). Currently, my main focus is on conditional reasoning, in particular the relationship between reasoning based on mental models and reasoning based on subjective probabilities.

Philosophy of Mind

My dissertation on "intentionality and reflection - steps toward a cognitive science from the intentional stance"

Oberauer, K. (1996). Intentionalität und Reflexion. Bausteine zu einer hermeneutischen Kognitionswissenschaft. Münster: Aschendorff.

is available only in German, but there is an English summary.