Michael McCloskey

Research Area

Cognitive neuropsychology, visual perception, reading and spelling, foundations of cognitive science

Research Summary

My research focuses primarily on cognitive deficits in children and adults with brain damage or learning disabilities, including deficits in visual perception, reading, spelling, and memory.  The goals are to gain insight into normal mental representations and processes and how these are instantiated in the brain, as well as to advance our understanding of cognitive deficits and how they may be treated.  For example, my colleagues and I have uncovered a new form of reading impairment, in which visual awareness for letters and digits is selectively disrupted.  In this deficit visual perception is normal except that the individual sees letters and/or digits only as blurs or jumbles of lines.  We have identified two cases: RFS, a 61-year-old man with a progressive neurological disease, and MTS, a 12-year-old girl who suffered a stroke at age 10. In studying these individuals we are using behavioral, electrophysiological, and functional neuroimaging methods to address questions concerning the cognitive and neural representations underlying visual awareness and reading.  We are also exploring, with considerable success, remediations for the reading impairments.

In addition to cognitive neuropsychological research, I explore visual-spatial cognition and lexical processing through empirical studies of normal individuals, computational modeling, and functional neuroimaging.

Finally, I am interested in foundational issues in cognitive science, including the rationale for adopting a representational/computational conception of the mind, the relationship between cognitive science and neuroscience, the fundamental distinctions between connectionist and symbolic frameworks, and the role of simulation in cognitive science (e.g., McCloskey, 1991).

Courses

Selected Publications

Fischer-Baum, S., Charny, J., & McCloskey, M. (2011).  Both-edges representation of letter position in reading.  Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, 18, 1083-1089. (PDF)

Gregory, E., Landau, B., & McCloskey, M.  (2011).  Representation of Object Orientation in Children: Evidence from Mirror-Image Confusions.  Visual Cognition, 19, 1035-1062. (PDF)

Fischer-Baum, S., McCloskey, M., & Rapp, B.  (2010).  Representation of letter position in spelling: Evidence from acquired dysgraphia.  Cognition, 115, 466-490. (PDF)

Gregory, E., & McCloskey, M.  (2010).  Mirror-image confusions: Implications for representation and processing of object orientation.  Cognition, 116, 110-129.McCloskey, M. (PDF)

Visual reflections: A perceptual deficit and its implications.  (2009) New York: Oxford. Oxford Scholarship Online: http://www.oxfordscholarship.com/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195168693.001.0001/acprof-9780195168693

Valtonen, J., Dilks, D. D., & McCloskey, M. (2008). Cognitive representation of orientation: A case study. Cortex, 44, 1171-1181. (PDF)

Dilks, D. D., Serences, J. T., Rosenau, B. J., Yantis, S., & McCloskey, M. (2007). Human cortical reorganization and consequent visual distortion. Journal of Neuroscience, 27, 9585-9594. (PDF)

McCloskey, M., Valtonen, J., & Sherman, J.  (2006). Representing orientation: A coordinate-system hypothesis, and evidence from developmental deficits.  Cognitive Neuropsychology, 23, 680-713. (PDF)

McCloskey, M., Macaruso, P., & Rapp, B.  (2006).  Grapheme-to-lexeme feedback in the spelling system:  Evidence from a dysgraphic patient.  Cognitive Neuropsychology, 23, 278-307. (PDF)

McCloskey, M.  (2004).  Spatial representations and multiple-visual-systems hypotheses:  Evidence from a developmental deficit in visual location and orientation processing.  Cortex, 40, 677-694.

McCloskey, M. (2003). Beyond task dissociation logic: A richer conception of cognitive neuropsychology. Cortex, 39, 196-202. (PDF)

Whalen, J., McCloskey, M., Lindemann, M., & Bouton, G. (2002). Representing arithmetic table facts in memory: Evidence from acquired impairments. Cognitive Neuropsychology, 19, 505-522. (PDF)

McCloskey, M. (2001). Future directions in cognitive neuropsychology. In B. Rapp (Ed.), What deficits reveal about the human mind/brain: A handbook of cognitive neuropsychology (pp. 593-610). Philadelphia: Psychology Press.

McCloskey, M. (2001). Spatial representation in mind and brain. In B. Rapp (Ed.), What deficits reveal about the human mind/brain: A handbook of cognitive neuropsychology (pp. 101-132). Philadelphia: Psychology Press.

McCloskey, M., & Rapp, B. (2000a). Attention-referenced visual representations: Evidence from impaired visual localization. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 26, 917-933. (PDF)

McCloskey, M., & Rapp, B. (2000b). A visually-based developmental reading deficit. Journal of Memory and Language, 43, 157-181. (PDF)

McCloskey, M., & Palmer, E. (1996). Visual representation of object location: Insights from localization impairments. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 5, 25-28.

McCloskey, M., Rapp, B., Yantis, S., Rubin, G., Bacon, W. F., Dagnelie, G., Gordon, B., Aliminosa, D., Boatman, D. F., Badecker, W., Johnson, D. N., Tusa, R. J., & Palmer, E. (1995). A developmental deficit in localizing objects from vision. Psychological Science, 6, 112-117. (PDF)

McCloskey, M., Badecker, W., Goodman-Schulman, R. A., & Aliminosa, D.  (1994).  The structure of graphemic representations in spelling:  Evidence from a case of acquired dysgraphia.  Cognitive Neuropsychology, 11, 341-392.

McCloskey, M.  (1991).  Networks and theories:  The place of connectionism in cognitive science.  Psychological Science, 2, 387-395. (PDF)

Other Affiliations

Joint appointments: 
        Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences
        Zanvyl Krieger Mind/Brain Institute
        Department of Neuroscience

Education

Ph.D., Cognitive Psychology, Princeton University, 1978