Dr. Ayala Allon

Dr. Ayala Allon
Dr. Ayala Allon
Israeli Postdoctoral Scholar
2018-2019 Cohort
Ohio State University
Department of Psychology
  • Cognitive Control Lab
  • Andrew Leber
  • Lab website

For her PhD in The School of Psychological Sciences at Tel-Aviv University, Dr. Allon investigated the filtering of irrelevant information in working memory using both behavioral and electrophysiological measures. At the Cognitive Control Lab in the Department of Psychology at Ohio State, she will investigate whether the same principles apply for filtering in attentional settings and in working memory, and the underlying processes of individual differences in filtering ability. Her research takes into consideration the field of education technology in Israel, since filtering irrelevant information has a key role in the learning process in schools, due to the difficulty of processing all the incoming stimuli in our crowded environment. Suppressing irrelevant information may also have implications for suppressing intrusive thoughts that contribute to anxiety disorders and depression. In the process of helping to set up the newly-founded Visual Working Memory Lab at TAU, Dr. Allon tried to find methods to organize her experimental data efficiently, and to reduce human error. With no previous programming experience, she acquired programming skills and developed a free open-source software R package called prepdat that was greatly appreciated by colleagues in her lab, and used today in other labs as well.