Dr. Thomas earned her bachelor’s degree from Washington University in St. Louis, where she worked as an assistant in the psychophysiology lab. She went on to study visual cognition and human performance at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, completing her PhD in 2008 before joining the Perception, Attention, and Control Lab at Vanderbilt University as a postdoctoral researcher. Dr. Thomas became a member of the Department of Psychology at NDSU in 2011, where she founded the Action & Cognition Lab.
Areas of Study & Research
Dr. Thomas’ research incorporates approaches from vision science and grounded cognition to investigate the ways in which actions influence perception and cognition. Recent work in the Action & Cognition Lab examines how tool use shapes representations of peripersonal space and the body schema, how affordances for interaction with the environment bias visual processing, and how sensorimotor simulations contribute to language comprehension.
Courses Taught
- PSYC 350 (Research Methods I)
- PSYC 464/664 (Attention and Thinking)
- PSYC 763 (Grant Writing for Psychological Scientists)
Links
Education
- Ph.D., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2008
- B.A., Washington University in St. Louis, 2002