Background

Dr. Wedell joined the faculty at the University of South Carolina in 1989. He is currently the Director of the Institute for Mind and Brain.

Research

The motivating force behind Dr. Wedell's research has been an attempt to better understand how context affects how we think about, feel, and interact with the world. He has studied context effects by altering the nature of the stimulus or choice set, changing features of the task, such as the mode of presentation or the type or response required, and manipulating the framing of the information being considered. His research is characterized by development of quantitative models that explain judgment, decision, and memory processes. Recent areas of research include the following:

Representations and Consequences of Affect: Dr. Wedell has collaborated with Dr. Svetlana Shinkareva on several projects that are aimed at better understanding the neural representation of affect and how this representation links to representations derived from behavioral measures. IN addition, in collaboration with Jongwan Kim, Dr. Wedell has examined how inducing affective states related to valence and arousal impact risky choice.

Context Effects on Music Memory and Preference: Dr. Wedell has collaborated with Dr. Matt Rashotte on several projects that are aimed at better understanding how musical tempo is perceived and how the preferred tempo for a song is altered by recent contextual experiences.

Bias in Spatial Memory: Dr. Wedell has developed models of spatial memory based on patterns of bias in estimation. Recent research demonstrates how biases change depending on perspective (egocentric or allocentric) and orientation to the environment (static or dynamic).

Judgment & Choice: Dr. Wedell has continued basic research into the contextual bases of judgment and choice. Within this area, he has been particularly concerned with the contextual processes underlying similarity and preference judgments. He has examined these processes using simple perceptual stimuli and more complex social stimuli. Recent research in this area has demonstrated contextually induced preference reversals for familiar stimuli such as faces, body shapes, and well known songs. 

Probability Judgment: Dr. Wedell has developed a research program aimed at understanding how judgments and decisions about risky prospects are influenced by whether they are considered as unique or as part of an aggregate. He has explored how reasoning about probabilities is influenced by response mode and how people confuse diagnostic and predictive judgments.

Recent Publications:

Kim, J., Strohbach, C., & Wedell, D. H. (in press). Effects of manipulating the tempo of popular songs on behavioral and physiological responses. Psychology of Music, __, __-__.

Kim, J., Shinkareva, S. V., & Wedell, D. H. (2017). Representations of modality-general valence for videos and music derived from fMRI data. Neuroimage, 148, 42-54.

Gao, C., Wedell, D. H., Kim, J., Weber, C. E., & Shinkareva, S. V. (2017). Modelling audiovisual integration of affect from videos and music. Cognition and Emotion, DOI: 10.1080/02699931.2017.1320979, 1-14. 

Kim, J., & Wedell, D. H. (2016). Comparison of physiological responses to affect eliciting pictures and music. International Journal of Psychophysiology, 101, 9-17.

Kim, J., Wang, J., Wedell, D. H., & Shinkareva, S. V. (2016). Identifying core affect in individuals from fMRI responses to dynamic naturalistic audiovisual stimuli. PLoS ONE, 11(9), e0161589. Doi:10.1371/ journal.pone.0161589.

Wedell, D. H. (2015). Multialternative choice models. In G. Wu and G. Keren (Eds.) The Wiley handbook of judgment and decision making: Volume 1 (pp 117-140), Oxford, UK: Wiley-Blackwell.

Watanabe, H., Fitting, S., Hussain, M., Kononenko, O., Iatsyshyna, A., Yoshitake, T., Kehr, J., Alkass, K., Drid, H., Wadensten, H., Andren, P, Nylander, I., Wedell, D., Krishtal, O., Hauser, K., Nyberg, F., Karpyak, V., Yakovleva, T., & Bakalkin, G. (2015). Asymmetry of endogenous opioid system in the human anterior cingulate: A putative molecular basis for lateralization of emotions and pain. Cerebral Cortex, 25(1), 97-108, first published online August 19, 2013 doi:10.1093/cercor/bht204.

Wedell, D. H., & Hutcheson, A. T. (2014). Spatial memory: From theory to application. In T. J. Perfect and D. S. Lindsay (Eds.), Handbook of applied memory (pp. 76-91). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Rashotte, M. A., & Wedell, D. H. (2014). Testing the absolute tempo hypothesis: Context effects for familiar and unfamiliar Songs. Memory & Cognition, 42, 1302- 1314.

Wedell, D. H. (2011). Probabilistic reasoning in prediction and diagnosis:  Effects of problem type, response mode, and individual differences. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, 24,157-179.

Wedell, D. H. (2011). Evaluations of single- and repeated-play gambles. Wiley Encyclopedia of Operations Research and Management Science.