KRISTINA KARLSSON

kristina karlsson
PhD Student

I wrote my bachelor thesis about auditory mental imagery and my master thesis about autobiographical memory at the Department of Psychology, University of Stockholm. During my master course, I also worked as a research assistant to PhD John Willander in the project “Multimodal retrieval of autobiographical memories.” Further, I have a bachelor in history of religion, a degree in history of theater, and also have a background in theater directing and drama writing.
When not involved in my own research and education, I enjoy teaching. My main subject is cognition, followed by research methods, developmental psychology, and qualitative interviewing. I also supervise bachelor students on my topics of interest.
Humans are fun, but animals are as fun! So when not preoccupied with human psychology, I carry out a lifelong study of animal behavior. At present, I am looking at individual differences and social interactions amongst domestic rats. Results so far: Rat’s social life is more complex than I hypothesized.

RESEARCH INTERESTS

My area of research is episodic memory, specifically autobiographical memory (AM). One of my main interests is to investigate differences in the content of AMs. In doing so, I apply, for example, the exciting statistical method of latent semantic analysis (LSA). With LSA, memory narratives are quantified as semantic representations in a high-dimensional semantic space. This method allows me to investigate latent language patterns in verbally shared AMs (i.e., how words and paragraphs position themselves in relation to each other).
In my dissertation, I investigate: i) differences in AMs retrieved by the use of uni- and multimodal sensory cues (i.e., visual, auditory, odor cues presented individually and simultaneously), ii) gender differences and iii) if phenomenological ratings, (e.g., valence and emotionality) of AMs can be predicted by AMs’ narrative content.

publications

(see Research Gate)

Willander, J., Sikström, S., & Karlsson, K. (2015). Multimodal retrieval of autobiographical memories: Sensory information contributes differently to the recollection of events. Frontiers in Psychology, 6, 1–8. http://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01681
Larsson, M., Willander, J., Karlsson, K., & Arshamian, A. (2014). Olfactory LOVER: Behavioral and neural correlates of autobiographical odor memory. Frontiers in Psychology. http://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00312
Karlsson, K., Sikström, S., & Willander, J. (2013). The semantic representation of event information depends on the cue modality: An instance of meaning-based retrieval. PLoS ONE, 8. http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0073378

Presentations

CONFERENCE ABSTRACTS AND POSTER PRESENTATIONS

Karlsson, K., & Willander, J. Multimodal cuing of autobiographical memory: Theoretical perspectives on autobiographical memory. International conference Center at Aarhus University, Center on Autobiographical memory research, Denmark, June 2010.
Karlsson, K., Sikström, S., & Willander, J. Semantic representations of retrieved event information: Perspectives on autobiographical memory development. International conference Center at Aarhus University, Center on Autobiographical memory research, Denmark, June 2011.
Karlsson, K., Sikström, S., & Willander, J. Semantic representations of retrieved event information: Perspectives on autobiographical memory development. European Society for Cognitive Psychology, San Sebastian, Spain, September 2011.
Karlsson, K., Sikström, S., & Willander, J. Predicting the subjective experience and age of autobiographical memories based on content. European Society for Cognitive Psychology, Budapest, Hungary, September 2013.
Karlsson, K., Sikström, S., & Willander, J. The semantic representation of autobiographical memories can predict the gender of the reminder. Association for Psychological Science, San Francisco, USA, May 2014.
Karlsson, K., Sikström, S., & Willander, J. The semantic representation of autobiographical Memories can predict the gender of the reminder. International conference Center at Aarhus University, Center on Autobiographical memory research, Denmark, June 2014.

ORAL PRESENTATIONS

Karlsson, K. (18/3 2011). Cue modality influences retrieval of autobiographical memory content. Cognition seminar. Department of Psychology, Lund University, Sweden.
Karlsson, K. (1/11 2011). Semantic representations of retrieved event information. Cognition seminar. Department of Psychology, Stockholm University, Sweden.
Karlsson, K. (12/10 2012). Multimodal retrieval of autobiographical memories: Sensory information contributes differently to the recollections of events. Department of Psychology, Stockholm University, Sweden.
Karlsson, K. (16/10 2015). Gender differences in sensory cued autobiographical memory reminiscence. Cognition seminar, Department of Psychology, Stockholm University, Sweden.

CONTACT

Frescati Hagväg 14, room 145
Department of Psychology
Stockholm University
106 91 Stockholm
Tel: 08-163843
Fax: 08-159342
kristina.karlsson@psychology.su.se