About

Todd Kahan’s research explores how people notice, ignore, and make sense of the constant stream of information around them. His work asks questions like: Why do sudden signals sometimes sharpen our focus and other times make us more distractible? How does the mind decide which sights or sounds break through into awareness while others remain unnoticed? And how do memory, culture, and emotional content shape what we perceive? By designing experiments that test how attention, perception, and memory interact in real time, Kahan’s studies reveal the hidden processes that allow us to read words, recognize objects, or spot changes in a busy scene. This research helps psychologists understand the workings of the mind and sheds light on practical challenges people face, like staying focused amid distractions and competing demands on attention.

Summary of Interests

• Visual perception and masking

• Word recognition processes involved in reading

• Selective attention

• Semantic priming

• Implicit and explicit memory

Education

• B.S. Psychology, Syracuse University (1992)
• Ph.D. Cognitive Psychology, University at Albany, State University of New York (1998)

 Awards

• James McKeen Cattell Fund Fellowship 2014-2015.
• Charles F. and Evelyn M. Phillips Faculty Fellowship, 2007.
• New Investigator Award in Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition; American Psychological Association, Division of Experimental Psychology, 2001.

Editorial Boards

• Associate Editor:
  Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics (2015-2020)
• Contributing Editor:
  Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics (2020-present)
  Frontiers in Psychology (2023-present)
  Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance (2012-2022)

Courses Taught

• FYS 580 Exploring Animal Intelligence
• PSYC s19 Animal Cognition: Exploring the Minds of Birds, Bees, Chimps, and Dolphins
• PSYC 101 Principles of Psychology
• PSYC 218 Statistical Methods 
• PSYC 230 Cognitive Psychology
• PSYC 261 Research Methodology 
• PSYC 302 Sensation and Perception
• PSYC 374 The Psychology of Language

Recent Publications

For a complete listing of publications and abstracts, or to request publications, click here.

* indicates Bates student

• Kahan, T. A., & *Smith. Z. P. (2024). Effects of Alerting Signals on the Spatial Stroop Effect: Evidence for Modality Differences. Psychological Research, 88(1), 25–38. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-023-01846-4
• *Savino, G. E., & Kahan, T. A. (2023). Target-mask similarity affects both object substitution masking and object recovery. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 49(2), 263–275. https://doi.org/10.1037/xhp0001072
• Kahan, T. A., Slowiaczek, L. M., *Harrison, A. C. M., & *Bogue, C. M. (2022). Temporal and sequential negative priming generalize across visual and auditory modalities and are dependent on relative rather than absolute speed. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1177/17470218221100248
• *Patterson, L., & Kahan, T. A. (2022). Is the alerting-congruency interaction that is seen in experiments with stimulus-response motor associations moderated by a concurrent working-memory load? Acta Psychologica, 225, 1-11. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.actpsy.2022.103541.
• Kahan, T. A., Slowiaczek, L. M., *Scott, N., & Pfohl, B. T. (2021). Word frequency does not moderate the degree to which people can selectively attend to parts of visually presented words. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 74(3), 573–581. https://doi.org/10.1177/1747021820969069
• Kahan, T. A., Slowiaczek, L. M., *Altschuler, M. R., & *Harrison, A. C. M. (2020). Temporal negative priming. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 149(2), 275–289. https://doi.org/10.1037/xge0000634
• Kahan, T. A., & *Zhang, H. (2019). Ready to be distracted: Further evidence that the alerting-congruency interaction requires stimulus-response directional associations. Visual Cognition, 27(9–10), 760–767. https://doi.org/10.1080/13506285.2019.1680586
•  *Patterson, E. E., & Kahan, T. A. (2019). Precrastination and the cognitive-load-reduction (clear) hypothesis. Memory. https://doi.org/10.1080/09658211.2019.1690001.
•  Kahan, T. A. (2016). What dot-based masking effects can tell us about visual cognition: A selective review of masking effects at the whole-object and edge-based levels. B. H. Ross (Ed.) The Psychology of Learning and Motivation, Vol. 64.
• *Choi, H., *Connor, C. B., *Wason, S. E., & Kahan, T. A. (2016). The effects of interdependent and independent priming on Western participants’ ability to perceive changes in visual scenes. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 47(1), 97–108. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022022115605384
• Ocampo, B., & Kahan, T. A. (2015). Evaluating automatic attentional capture by self-relevant information. Cognitive Neuroscience. DOI: 10.1080/17588928.2015.1075486
• *Prioli, S. C., & Kahan, T. A. (2015). Identifying words that emerge into consciousness: Effects of word valence and unconscious previewing. Consciousness and Cognition, 35, 88-97.
• Mathis, K. M., & Kahan, T. A. (2014). Holistic processing improves change detection but impairs change identification. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 21(5), 1250-1254. doi:10.3758/s13423-014-0614-5
• Slowiaczek, L. M., & Kahan, T. A. (2014). Evidence for the automatic processing of prelexical codes in an orthographic but not a phonological task. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 21(6), 1607-1616. doi:10.3758/s13423-014-0638-x
• Kahan, T. A., & Enns, J. T. (2014). Long-term memory representations influence perception before edges are assigned to objects. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 143(2), 566-574. doi:10.1037/a0033723
• Kahan, T. A., *Oldak, V. A., & *Lichtman A. S. (2013). Working memory loads affect location-based negative priming differently than inhibition of return. Journal of Cognitive Psychology, 25, 473-492.
• Kahan, T. A., & *Chokshi, N. S. (2013). Perceptual interactions between primes, masks, and targets: Further evidence for object updating. Visual Cognition, 21, 123-138.
• Kahan, T. A., *Colligan, S. M., & *Wiedman, J. N. (2011). Are visual features of a looming or receding object processed in a capacity-free manner? Consciousness And Cognition: An International Journal, 20(4), 1761-1767.
• Kahan, T. A., Mathis, K. M., & *Hengen, K. B. (2011). An examination of orthographic and phonological processing using the task-choice procedure. Language and Cognitive Processes, 26, 171-190.
• Kahan, T. A., & Enns, J. T. (2010). Object trimming: When masking dots alter rather than replace target representations. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 36, 88-102.