Dr Luísa Superbia Guimarães

Profile

I joined the School of Psychology as a lecturer in March 2024. Before this, I held a postdoctoral position at the University of Missouri (Department of Psychological Sciences) in the United States, from 2022 to 2024. I completed my PhD in Psychology at the Université de Fribourg (Switzerland) in 2022, and I earned both my MSc in Psychobiology and BSc in Psychology from the University of São Paulo (Brazil).

Research interests

I am a cognitive psychologist investigating the functioning of working memory (WM) in children and adults, with a focus on attentional processes across development. I am particularly interested in how attention supports the short-term maintenance of information in WM and how maintenance strategies develop with age from mid-childhood to adulthood. I use experimental behavioural methods to investigate my research questions. My current research interests are centred on the following questions:

1. How can children and adults offload information from WM, thus optimising storage? To offload means to alleviate the burden of storing information in WM, either by using external devices to scaffold performance (e.g., taking notes) or by transferring the stored information to other memory systems, such as long-term memory (LTM). In this line of research, I investigate the hypothesis that proficiency in offloading information is a developmental source of the capacity increase in WM among school-aged children.

2. How does similarity affect working memory capacity, and how? The similarity between stimuli features, whether at the physical, code, or semantic level, has been reported to affect WM capacity in different ways, depending on how it is operationalised and how it is tested (e.g., item recognition or serial order recall). For example, phonological similarity between words hampers performance (i.e., it is harder to remember similar-sounding words, like feather-leather-weather), but semantic similarity boosts it (i.e., it is easier to remember words that are semantically associated, like fork-knife-spoon). In this line of research, I aim to systematically test the possible sources of similarity effects in WM, both for item and serial order information.

3. What specific working memory mechanisms differ in people with and without attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)? ADHD has been associated with deficits in WM functioning, yet there lacks a mechanistic explanation for these purported WM deficits. In this line of research, I aim to pinpoint dysfunctional WM processes in people with symptoms of inattention and hyperactivity.

Qualifications

• 2019-2022: PhD in Psychology, Université de Fribourg, Switzerland
• 2017-2019: MSc in Psychobiology, Universidade de São Paulo, Brazil
• 2012-2016: Bachelor of Science in Psychology, Universidade de São Paulo, Brazil

Professional memberships

• Psychonomic Society

Student education

I teach topics related to child cognitive development, typical and atypical, both in the undergraduate and MSc programs.