Dr. Jonathon Whitlock will be recruiting a graduate student for Fall 2025!

Education

A. A., Oakland Community College, 2009

B.A., University of Michigan-Dearborn, 2015

M.S., University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, 2020

Pd.D., University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, 2024

Research Interests

My research interests focus on specialized topics within the field of Episodic Memory. My work places a special emphasis on a kind of memory known as Relational Memory, which involves information for how the constituent elements of our daily experiences are related. I utilize techniques such as eye-tracking and pupillometry to better understand how memory processes unfold over time, during both memory formation and retrieval. Some of the research topics that my work explores includes the mechanisms supporting our ability to intentionally forget unwanted or irrelevant information, the role that visual attention plays in memory formation, viewing behavior that reflects memory for previous experience, and pupil-based physiological markers of memory formation and retrieval. Specifically, my research is aimed at exploring how our ability to remember aspects of our experience as well as our ability to intentionally forget unwanted information unfolds over time.  

Publications

• Whitlock, J., Ding, H., Hubbard, R., & Sahakyan, L. (2024). Delayed testing in directed forgetting dissociates active and passive forms of forgetting. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition.
• Lo, Y., Ding, H., Whitlock, J., & Sahakyan, L. (2024). The dynamics of intentional forgetting: exploring the interplay of memory strength and meaningfulness for verbal and visual stimuli. Memory, 1-18.
• Whitlock, J., Hubbard, R., Ding, H., & Sahakyan, L. (2023). Trial-level fluctuations in pupil dilation during encoding reflect strength of relational binding. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition.
• Ding, H., Whitlock, J., & Sahakyan, L. (2022). Can intentional forgetting reduce the cross-race effect in memory? Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 29(4), 1387-1396.
• Whitlock, J., Chiu, Y., & Sahakyan, L., (2022). Directed forgetting in associative memory: Dissociating item and associative impairment. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 48(1), 29-42.
• Whitlock, J., Lo, Y., Chiu, Y., & Sahakyan, L., (2020). Eye movement analyses of strong and weak memories and goal-driven forgetting. Cognition, 204, 104391.