My research is conducted primarily within two research traditions: individual differences in cognitive aging and the cognitive neuroscience of aging.

I examine patterns and predictors of cognitive decline in the healthy elderly, as well as for the developmental transition between primary and secondary aging (e.g., accelerated memory loss due to morbidity). In particular, I am interested in the early identification of risk factors (genetic, biological, psychological) that foreshadow cognitive impairment associated with age, dementia onset, and subsequent death.

Recent avenues of investigation have focused upon the early identification of those at risk for cognitive and functional decline, paying particular attention to lifestyle interventions (e.g., walking, social singing) that may delay or prevent memory changes with increasing age. My programmatic research continues to explore performance variability, or inconsistency, in (a) behavioural cognitive function (e.g., fluctuations across response latency trials), (b) physiological function (e.g., gait), as well as (c) brain function (e.g., neural variability indexed using fNIRS or fMRI). Findings from my research lab suggest that variability in response profiles may be more sensitive than mean performance for early identification of those at risk of cognitive decline, dementia, or death. Many of these investigations employ novel longitudinal research designs (e.g., intensive repeated measures designs) as well as various statistical techniques for the analysis of change.