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Benjamin Uel Marsh is a cognitive psychologist specializing in how language and culture mediate memory. He earned his BS in psychology from Birmingham-Southern College and, after college, was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to teach English in Hong Kong. He earned his Ph.D. in Cognitive Psychology from Claremont Graduate University and was an assistant professor of psychology at Azusa Pacific University for five years. He is currently an associate professor of psychology at the University of Tampa.
Research Interests
Biculturalism & Memory
Autobiographical Memory and Face Recognition
At some point, we build knowledge structures (i.e., schemas, scripts, and concepts) that mentally represent the culture in which we have developed. These cultural representations can influence reported memory content (Marsh, Lee, & Schirmer, 2019; Wang 2008) and even face recognition accuracy (Marsh, 2021; Marsh, Revenaugh, Weeks, & Lee, 2021; Marsh, Pezdek, & Ozery, 2016). In this area, my lab focuses mainly on cultural factors that moderate the cross-race effect – our tendency to remember same race faces more accurately than other race faces.
Bilingualism & Memory
Language Dependent Recall Effect
Language acts as a recoding device (Rubin, 2006), a mechanism for mentally representing experiences. While this function of language is apparent in monolinguals, it is fascinatingly clear in bilinguals. In this area, my lab is mostly interested in the language dependent recall effect wherein memory retrieval is facilitated when the linguistic context at retrieval is similar to the linguistic context during encoding (Marsh, Kanaya, & Pezdek, 2015; Marian & Neisser, 2000).
Bilingual Biculturals & The Cognitive Consequences
How Lexical Structures are linked to Cultural Representations
The modified hierarchical model (Pavlenko, 2009) provides a framework for depicting how coordinate bilinguals' languages can become more associated with one set of cultural representations than another set. In this area, my lab focuses on how increasing the salience of one set of cultural representations facilitates access to one language over the other.
Biometric Inquiries
Much of my research in the LCC lab utilizes eye tracking technology to assess what visual scanning practices are associated with poor face memory. Moreover, it is possible that certain stimuli and experimental environments facilitate particular visual scanning patterns. We may even focus on more simple questions such as what part of the face, webpage, or narrative do participants spend the most time on and which parts do they appear to miss entirely? Moreover, using pupillometry and facial expression analysis, the lab investigates the role subtle emotional reactions play in face memory.
Other Ventures
"Whatever we know about reality has been mediated, not only by the organs of sense but complex systems which interpret and reinterpret sensory information."
Ulric Neisser (1967)
