His early research was a programmatic series of studies investigating the role of comprehension of specific task demands in the assessment of cognitive abilities, such as selective remembering. This program of research has established that some of the "strategy deficiencies" attributed to individuals with mental retardation are due to their incomplete comprehension of task demands, rather than to other central processing deficiencies.
Recently, Norm Bray's program of research has broadened to explore cognitive strategies that use spatial aspects of the environment. Because a substantial portion of everyday memory relies on external memory aids, he has initiated studies about the use of external orientation of objects. This research raises the possibility that many strategy deficiencies observed in mentally retarded individuals are due to limitations of verbal abilities rather than limitations in a general ability to use strategies -- a view that contradicts much of current metacognitive theorizing. Recently external strategies used in more academic tasks such as in young children learning simple addition facts has been added to this line of investigation. Norm Bray is Principal Investigator for a research grant entitled "Memory Skills of Mentally Retarded Children" from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development which supports this line of research.
Since 1992, Norm Bray has collaborated with Kevin Reilly and his graduate students in the Department of Computer and Information Science on computer simulations of the use of cognitive strategies by mentally retarded children. This interdisciplinary collaboration on neural net models has led to the development of a new theoretical framework for research on cognitive strategies and unique training opportunities in the area of mental retardation. Norm Bray is Principal Investigator for a research grant entitled " Mental Retardation and Models of Strategy Adoption" from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development which supports this line of research.
Norm Bray was elected as a Fellow in the American Psychological Association and has served on the Executive Committee of the Gatlinburg Conference on Research and Theory in Mental Retardation. Since 1972, he has been actively involved in graduate education, with 8 students completing doctoral dissertations under his supervision and 2 postdoctoral fellows. Of these 10 Ph.D.'s, 5 have academic positions and are conducting research in developmental psychology and/or mental retardation. Norm Bray currently serves as the mentor for Lisa Grupe's doctoral dissertation.
Send Internet email to: bray@cis.uab.edu.
Lisa Huffman, Ph.D.
Lisa has gained valuable teaching experience at UAB and currently serves as an instructor in the Department of Psychology for the following undergraduate courses: Introduction to Psychology, Developmental Psychology, Cognitive Psychology, Methods in Psychological Research, and Cross-Cultural Perspectives in Child Development. Lisa is a member of Psi Chi, APS, SRCD, and the Cognitive Science Society and has made more than a dozen presentations at these and other conferences over the past six years. She has been a contributing author on five publications; her dissertation investigated how goal sketches and knowledge of social rules influence strategy use across a wide age range of schoolchildren.
Curriculum Vitae
Lisa Grupe
Lisa completed her teaching practicum in Psychology at UAB in 1996 and currently serves as an instructor in the Department of Psychology for several undergraduate courses: Developmental Psychology, Cognition, and a Seminar in Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities. Lisa is a member of APA, APS and the Cognitive Science Society and a past officer of Psi Chi. She has been a contributing author on five articles and a dozen conference presentations over the past four years. Upon completion of her Ph.D., she plans to obtain a teaching and/or research position in the Birmingham area.
Send Internet email to: lgrupe@uab.edu.
Laura Barnes
As the lab coordinator, Laura oversees the diverse activities of the lab. She works on both the memory and math studies. Last year, she assisted in the design and implementation of a memory study which looks at how varying levels of situational support affect remembering and recall of 2, 3, 5, and 7 objects by children with and without mental retardation. She is currently working on this project.
Laura enjoys working full-time in the Cognitive Development Lab and is gaining valuable research experience that will prepare her for a career in psychology.
Send Internet email to: lbarnes@uab.edu.
Carrie Robertson
As a research assistant, Carrie has primarily been involved in the math studies testing subjects and scoring data. Her experience in the lab prepares her for a future career in Psychology.
Send Internet email to: crobertson@uab.edu.
Norman W. Bray
Norman Bray received his Ph.D. in Experimental Child Psychology from the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana, in 1972. While at Illinois, he was supported by a training grant from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development and worked in the laboratories of Keith Scott, Ann Brown, and Joe Campione. He was Director of Research Training at the Cincinnati Center for Developmental Disorders from 1972-1977, and a mentoring faculty member of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Mental Retardation training grant at the University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, from 1977 to 1984. He was Director of the Division of Psychology at the Sparks Center at the University of Alabama at Birmingham from 1984 to 1990 and was instrumental in establishing the Civitan Center. He was the founder and first Director of the Developmental Psychology Doctoral Program at UAB from 1990-1995.
Lisa Huffman obtained her doctoral degree in 1998 and her Master's in 1995, both from UAB. Her specialty is in the area of memory and strategy development. Currently she is involved in research design, supervising honors students, data collection, data analysis and writing research articles about both the memory and math studies. She has also gained much grant-writing experience and, in fact, received a National Research Service Fellowship Award from NIMH in 1995.
Send Internet email to: lhuffman@uab.edu.
Lisa Grupe received her Master's degree in Psychology from UAB in 1998 and her Bachelor's degree from Vanderbilt University in 1983. After ten years of working in various fields, including Human Resources, Corporate Marketing, and Public Policy, Lisa began graduate school in Developmental Psychology in 1993. Her area of specialty is strategy development. She is actively pursuing her doctoral degree which explores early addition strategies in young children and how the presence of manipulatives may affect those strategies. She is also involved in grant writing, research design, training of research assistants, data collection, data analysis and writing research articles.
Laura Barnes received her B.S. in Psychology from UAB in June, 1997 with a minor in Criminal Justice. While studying at UAB, she participated in the Psychology Honors Program where she was involved in the design, facilitation, data scoring and data analysis of a study which assessed the effectivenss of a social-cognitive theory-based intervention designed to increase physical exercise activity in women between ages 18 and 45.
Carrie Robertson received her bachelor's degree in Psychology from UAB in June, 1998. During her senior year, Carrie participated in the Psychology honors program where her project involved the development of speech and language in young children; she tested the role of positive feedback using a gating paradigm, a task that measures how much acoustic-phonetic input is needed to recognize a particular word. After assisting in the project's design, she tested subjects, scored and analyzed data.
Books and Journal Publications
Bray, N. W., Fletcher, K. L., &Huffman, L. F. (in press). Development and Intellectual Differences in Relations Between Self-Report and Strategy Use.
Developmental Psychology.Bray, N. W., Huffman, L. F., & Grupe, L. A. (in press). Un cadre conceptuel pour l'etude des competences et des dificiences mnesiques chez l'enfant retarde mental. In F. B. Buchel, Y. Coubios, J. L. Paour, & U. Schamhorst (Eds.), Deficience mentale: Attention, memoire, apprentissage. Lucerne/Lausanne: Edition SPC/SZH. Translates to:
Bray, N. W., Reilly, K. D., Huffman, L. F., Grupe, L. A., Villa, M. F., Fletcher, K. L., & Anumolu, V. (in press). Cognitive competencies in children with mental retardation. In W. Bechtel & G. Graham (Eds.) The Companion to Cognitive Science. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Biasini, F., Grupe, L. A., Huffman, L. F., & Bray, N. W. (1998). Mental retardation: A symptom and a syndrome. In S. Netherton, D. Holmes, & C. E. Walker (Eds.), Comprehensive Textbook on Child and Adolescent Disorders. New York: Oxford University Press.
Bray, N. W., Reilly, K. D., Fletcher, K. L., Huffman, L. F., Grupe, L. A., Villa, M. F., & Anumolu, V. (1998). Memory competencies and deficiencies: A conceptual framework and the potential of connectionist models. In S. Soraci & W. McIlvane (Eds.), Perspectives on Fundamental Processes in Intellectual Functioning: A Survey of Research Approaches., (Vol. 1, pp. 3-44). New York: Ablex.
Fletcher, K. L., Huffman, L. F., Bray, N. W. & Grupe, L.A. (1998). The Use of the Microgenetic Method with Children with Disabilities: Discovering Competence. Early Education and Development, 9 357-373.
Reilly, K. D., Bray, N. W., Drake, J. M., & Villa, M. F. (1998). Modular solutions to strategy selection problems in man and machine. In N. Callaos (Ed.), Proceeding of the Fourth International Conference on Systems, Cybernetics and Informatics (Vol. 3., pp. 405-412). New York: International Institute of Informatics and Systemics.
Reilly, K. D., Buckley, J. J., Bray, N. W., & Drake, J. M. (1998). The fuzzy teaching machine, rule processing and RoboKid strategy change. In N. Callaos (Ed.), Proceeding of the Fourth International Conference on Systems, Cybernetics and Informatics (Vol. 3 pp. 533-540). New York: International Institute of Informatics and Systemics.
Villa, M. F., Bray, N. W., & Reilly, K. D. (1998). Modular neural network models of strategy adoption. In N. Callaos (Ed.), Proceeding of the Fourth International Conference on Systems, Cybernetics and Informatics Conference (Vol. 2, pp.569-573). New York: International Institute of Informatics and Systemics.
Bray, N. W., Reilly, K. D., Villa, M. F., & Grupe, L. A. (1997). Neural network models and mechanisms of strategy development. Developmental Review.17, 525-566.
Fletcher, K. L., & Bray, N. W. (1997). Instructional and contextual effects on external memory strategy use in preschool children. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 67, 204-222.
Reilly, K. D., Bray, N. W., Drake, J., Golding, E., Chen, D., & Pan, W. (1997). Intelligent system modeling using neural networks and animation within a distributed programming context. In M. S. Obaidat (Ed.), Proceedings of the 1997 summer computer simulation conference (pp. 735-740). New York: Society for Computer Simulation.
Reilly, K. D., Bray, N. W., & Drake, J. (1997). Neural and hybrid intelligent system models coordinated with a logic based reasoning methodology. In M. S. Obaidat (Ed.), Proceedings of the 1997 summer computer simulation conference (pp. 729-734). New York: Society for Computer Simulation.
Anumolu, V., Bray, N. W., & Reilly, K. D. (1996). Neural network models of strategy development in children. Neural Networks, 10, 7-24.
Bray, N. W., Fletcher, K. L., & Turner, L. A. (1996). Cognitive competencies and strategy use in individuals with mild retardation. In W. E. MacLean Jr. (ed.) Handbook of Mental Deficiency, Psychological Theory and Research (3rd ed., pp 197-217). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Fletcher, K. L., & Bray, N. W. (1996). External memory strategy use in preschool children. Merrill Palmer Quarterly, 42 379-396.
Reilly, K. D., Bray, N. W., Villa, M. F., Caniglia-Reilly, J. A. , & Golding, E. (1996). The RoboKid models: Modules, substrates, behavior. In K. H. Chang and J. H. Cross, II, (Eds.), Proceedings of the 34th Annual Southeast Conference of the Association for Computing Machinery (pp. 341-343). New York: ACM.
Fletcher, K. L., & Bray, N. W. (1995). External and verbal strategies in children with and without mild mental retardation. American Journal on Mental Retardation, 99, 363-375.
Bray, N.W., Saarnio, D.A., Borges, L. M., & Hawk, L.W. (1994). Intellectual and Developmental Differences in External Memory Strategies. American Journal on Mental Retardation, 99, 19-31.
Bray, N.W., Saarnio, D. A., & Hawk, L. W. (1994). A context for understanding intellectual and developmental differences in strategy competencies. American Journal on Mental Retardation, 99, 44-49.
Anumolu, V., Bray, N. W., & Reilly, K. D. (1993). A neural network model of strategy selection and evolution. Proceedings of the 1993 World Congress on Neural Networks, 1528-1535.
Reilly, K. D., Villa, M. F., Bray, N.W., & Anumolu, V. (1993). Neural network and hybrid modeling of external memory strategy acquisition in humans and intelligent robots. Proceedings of the Fifth Workshop on Neural Networks: Academic/Industrial/NASA/Defense -- An International Conference on Computational Intelligence: Neural Networks, Fuzzy Systems, Evolutionary Programming and Virtual Reality, 319-324.
Reilly, K. D., Bray, N. W., Rao, G., Hitt, T., Zhu, G., Villa, M. F., Tarng, J. J., Anumolu, V., Brightman, K, Raghuraman, G., & Krishnamraju, P. V. (1993). Cooperative heterogeneous intelligent processing systems: Distributed modeling of problem-solving strategy development. Proceedings of the Fifth Workshop on Neural Networks: Academic/Industrial/NASA/Defense -- An International Conference on Computational Intelligence: Neural Networks, Fuzzy Systems, Evolutionary Programming and Virtual Reality, 250-255.
Abstracts
Anumolu, V., Bray, N. W., & Reilly, K. D. (1993). Hybrid neural network implementation of strategy selection for solving the object-target matching problem. Journal of the Alabama Academy of Science, 65(2), 160.
Anumolu, V., Reilly, K. D., & Bray, N. W. (April, 1992). A neural network model to store and recall a sequence of instructions. The Journal of the Alabama Academy of Science, 63(2), 155.
Anumolu, Vivek, Reilly, Kevin D., & Bray, N. W. (1992). A neural network approach for the temporal control of cognitive maps. Proceedings from the Neural Network Conference (pp. 1). Boston, MA.
Papers Presented
Grupe, L. A., Huffman, L. F., Shunnarah, T., Barnes, L., Malmberg, J., & Bray, N. W. (March, 1998). Evolution of addition strategies in children with and without mental retardation. Poster presented at the Gatlinburg Conference on Theory and Research in Mental Retardation/Developmental Disabilities, Charleston, SC.
Grupe, L. A., Malmberg, J., Shunnarah, T., Barnes, L., Huffman, L. F., & Bray, N. W. (March, 1998). An investigation of practice effects in a simple addition task: Manipulatives and strategy use. Poster presented at the Conference on Human Development, Mobile, AL.
Grupe, L. A., Huffman, L. F., & Bray, N. W. (April, 1997). How do kindergartners solve addition problems and are they accurate?. Poster presented at the meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development, Washington, D.C.
Huffman, L. F., Bray, N. W., & Grupe, L. A., (April, 1997). Task factors and individual differences in working memory influence strategy use. Poster presented at the meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development, Washington, D.C.
Grupe, L. A., Huffman, L. F., & Bray, N. W. (June, 1996). Manipulatives influence accuracy but not strategy use in kindergartners solving of addition problems. Poster presented at the American Psychological Society, San Francisco, CA.
Huffman, L. F., Grupe, L. A., & Bray, N. W. (1996, June). Goal Sketches may underlie knowledge and use of external memory strategies. Poster presented at American Psychological Society, San Francisco, CA.
Huffman, L. F., Fletcher, K. F., & Bray, N. W. (1996, July). Verbal Cues Increase External Strategy Use in Adults. Poster presented at the Eighteenth Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society, La Jolla, CA.
Bray, N. W. (March, 1996). Discussant. Symposium: Developmental Change in Retrieval Inhibition? A New Look at Children's Directed-Forgetting. Presented at the Conference on Human Development, Birmingham, AL.
Grupe, L. A., Huffman, L. F., & Bray, N. W. (March, 1996). Addition Strategies in Kindergarten Children. Paper presented at the Conference on Human Development, Birmingham, AL.
Grupe, L., Huffman, L., Bray, N., Ward, J., & Hawk, T. (March, 1995). Evolution of Addition Strategies in Children With and Without Mental Retardation. Gatlinburg Conference on Research and Theory in Mental Retardation, Gatlinburg, TN.
Bray, N. W., Reilly, D. D., Villa, M. F., Grupe, L. A., & Sadeh, B. (April, 1995). Hybrid Neural Network Models of Strategy Development. The Society for Research in Child Development Meeting, Indianapolis, IN.
Turner, C., & Bray, N. W. (April, 1994). Error analysis of intellectual and developmental differences in external memory strategies. Meeting of the Southeastern Psychological Association, New Orleans, LA.
Fletcher, K. L., & Bray, N. W. (April, 1994). External orientation behaviors in a memory task: The unidimensional encoding hypothesis. Conference on Human Development, Pittsburgh, PA.
Bray, N. W., Huffman, L. F., Ward, J. M., & Hawk, T. L. (March, 1994). A microgenetic study of addition strategies in young children with and without mild mental retardation. Gatlinburg Conference on Mental Retardation, Gatlinburg, TN.
Fletcher, K. L., Bray, N. W., Hawk, T. M., & Ward, J. L. (March, 1994). The use of models and verbal prompts in support of external strategies in children with mental retardation. Gatlinburg Conference on Mental Retardation, Gatlinburg, TN.
Fletcher, K. L., & Bray, N. W. (March, 1994). The strategic nature of external orientation behaviors in preschool children. Society for Research in Child Development, New Orleans, LA.
Reilly, K., Villa, M., Bray, N., Tarng, J., Rao, G., Anumolu, V., Hitt, T., Brightman, K., Zhu, G., Raghuraman, G., Krishnamraju, P. (November, 1993). Cooperative heterogeneous intelligent processing systems: Distributed modeling of problem-solving strategy development. San Francisco, CA.
Reilly, K. D., Bray, N. W., Villa, M. F., & Anumolu, V. (November, 1993). Neural network and hybrid modeling of external memory strategy acquisition in humans and intelligent robots. San Francisco, CA.
Anumolu, V., Bray, N. W. & Reilly, K. D. (July, 1993). A neural network model of strategy selection and evolution. Paper presented at the 1993 World Congress on Neural Networks, Portland, OR.
Bray, N. W., Anumolu, V., & Reilly, K. D. (June, 1993). A hybrid neural network system for strategy selection in mentally retarded and nonretarded children. Paper presented at the American Psychology Society Convention, Chicago, IL.
Fletcher, Kathryn M., & Bray, N. W. (March 1993). The strategic nature of external orientation behaviors in preschool children. Paper presented at the Society for Research in Child Development Meeting, New Orleans, LA.
Anumolu, V., Reilly, K.D., & Bray, N.W. (November, 1992). A hybrid neural network system with serial learning and associative components. Paper presented at the 1992 International Simulation Technology Conference: Workshop on Neural Networks, Houston, TX.
Anumolu, V., Reilly, K., & Bray, N. W. (May, 1992). A neural network approach for the temporal control of cognitive maps. Paper presented at the Neural Network Conference, Boston, MA.
Bray, N. W., Fletcher, K. L., Hawk, L. W., Van Matre, K. J., Ward, J. L., Hawk, T., & Blair, C. B. (April, 1992). The Effects of Memory Load on Observed and Reported External Memory Strategies in Children and Adolescents. Paper presented at the Southern Society for Philosophy and Psychology, Memphis, Tennessee.
Bray, N. W., Fletcher, K. L., Hawk, L. W., Van Matre, K. J., & Ward, J. (April, 1992). Developmental Differences in External Memory Strategies in School-Aged Children. Paper presented at the Conference on Human Development, Atlanta, Georgia.
Bray, N. W., Fletcher, K. L., Hawk, L. W., Van Matre, K. J., Ward, J. L., Hawk, T., & Blair, C. B. (March, 1992). Observed and Reported External Strategies in Mentally Retarded and Nonretarded Children and Adolescents. Paper presented at the Gatlinburg Conference on Research in Mental Retardation, Gatlinburg, Tennessee.
