Jennifer Laude

Jennifer Laude has been a member of the Comparative Cognition Laboratory since 2010. She received her Bachelor degree from the University of Kentucky in 2010, and will be defending her masters thesis this fall (2011). Despite her wide research interests, most of her research concerns the development of an innovative animal model of decision making in pigeons and humans that may have important implications for addictive gambling behavior. Recent research in the lab has shown that pigeons prefer a risky alternative (not unlike human gamblers) that has a low probability of a high valued outcome over a high probability of a lower valued outcome, even if the preferred alternative results in much less reinforcement. The results suggest that human gambling behavior very likely has a basic behavioral component that might be amenable to study for the development of interventions. She is currently studying the learning, attentional, and motivational mechanisms that underlie this behavior. Her research also examines certain environmental variables thought to affect this behavior. Further research with humans is investigating the roles of cognitive and behavioral impulsivity in the acquisition and maintenance of maladaptive choice-behavior.