Priya B. Kalra

My long-term career goal is to develop an understanding of knowledge representation and organization that is relevant to education and based on rigorous basic science that crosses levels of analysis.

What are the processes or mechanisms that result in new knowledge and skills? This part of my research grows out of cognitive neuroscience research on memory and memory systems. I am particularly interested in potential interactions between different hypothesized systems or processes.

• CNS 2025 Poster
• CNS 2023 Poster
• Kalra, P.B. & Minda, J.P. (abstract submitted) Implicit learning affects explicitly learned category judgements. Psychonomics Society Meeting 2022.
• Kalra, P.B. (manuscript in preparation) Predictors of spontaneous explicit learning in an implicit learning task. See Poster version from 2018 Cognitive Science Society Annual Meeting, Madison.
• Kalra, P.B., Finn, A.S., and Gabrieli, J.D.E. (2019) Evidence of Stable Individual Differences in Implicit Learning. Cognition 190:199-211
• Finn, A.S*., Kalra, P*., (*co-first authors) Goetz, C., Leonard, J.A., Sheridan, M.A., Gabrieli, J.D.E. (2016) Developmental dissociation between the maturation of procedural memory and declarative memory. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 142:212-240

Relational concepts are key to understanding in STEM. Decades of research on entity concept and category learning have given us models of how concepts are learned and represented--but how well do these models work for relational concepts?

• Kalra, P. B., & Richland, L. E. (2022). Relational Reasoning: A Foundation for Higher Cognition Based on Abstraction. Mind, Brain, and Education, 16(2), 149-152.
This is the introduction article to a special issue on Relational Reasoning in Mind, Brain and Education that I co-edited with Lindsey Richland.
• Kalra, P.B. Perceptual Similarity Affects Relational Judgements. Poster accepted for Cognitive Science Society Annual Meeting 2022
• Kalra, P.B., Lazaroff, E., & Matthews, P.G. Variation in surface features improves recognition of common magnitude relations. Poster presented at Cognitive Science Conference 2020
• Kalra, P. B., Hubbard, E. M., & Matthews, P. G. (2020) Taking the Relational Structure of Fractions Seriously: Relational Reasoning Predicts Fraction Knowledge in Elementary School Children. Contemporary Educational Psychology 62: 101896

Translational work and creating infrastructure for knowledge translation and exchange are critical if we want research and practice to inform each other.

• Kalra, P.B. and Minda, J.P. A Cognitive Psychology Perspective on Example Selection for STEM Concepts. Presentation at CIRCLE (Center for Research on Cognition, Learning, and Education) Conference, April 2022, Washington University in St. Louis.
• Kalra, P.B. Using Relational Complexity to Guide Instructional Strategy Choices. Related preprint and invited talk (Analogical Minds seminar series, June 2020).
• Kalra, P.B. Exploiting the structure of academic content to advance basic research. Presentation at SRCD Symposium, March 2019
• Kalra P. and O’Keefe, J.K. (2011) Communication in mind, brain, and education: Making disciplinary differences explicit. Mind, Brain and Education 5(4): 163-171

• Park, Y., Kalra, P.B., Binzak, J.V., Matthews, P.G., Hubbard, E.M. (manuscript submitted)
• Kalra, P.B., Binzak, J.V., Matthews, P.G., Hubbard, E. M. (2020). Symbolic fractions elicit an analog magnitude representation in school-age children. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 195
• Kalra, P.B. & Hubbard (manuscript in preparation) Functional connectivity of IPS predicts fraction knowledge. See Poster version from Flux Congress 2018
• Blackburne, L.K., Eddy, M., Kalra, P., Yee, D., Sinha, P., Gabrieli, JDE (2014) Neural correlates of letter reversal in children and adults PLoS One 9(5): e98386