Cynthia Sifonis, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Office: 222 Pryale Hall
Phone: 248-370-4680
Fax: 248-370-4612
E-mail: sifonis@oakland.edu
Personal Web Page: http://www.cindy.sifonis.com
Major Field
Cognitive psychology:
Category Learning/Use;
Creativity;
Analogy
Degrees
B.A. Bemidji State University
M.S. Texas A&M University
Ph.D Texas A&M University
Research Interests
The relationship between category representation and category use.
Specifically, the manner in which the use of category knowledge affects the representation of that knowledge
and how the category representation affects category use.
Creativity: How concepts and categories are used when creating
novel products and how examples constrain creativity when viewed
immediately before generating new ideas.
Analogy: How a person's understanding and representation of a
problem interact with the characteristics of the prior knowledge during
analogical problem solving.
Biography
My graduate training at Texas A&M University emphasized the
creative cognition approach to creativity. This approach examines how
people use normal cognitive processes such as analogy and their
knowledge of the world they live in to produce creative products and
ideas.
Following graduation, I took the opportunity to further refine my
research skills in the area of Cognitive Science with two years of
post-doctoral training at the Beckman Institute at the University of
Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.
During the past ten years, I have used these skills daily to further
both basic and applied laboratory research examining the various factors
influencing the creative process. A main area of focus for this
research is determining the processes underlying analogical reasoning
and how people use existing knowledge to innovate.
Other Interests
I love exploring the use of new technologies to improve my pedagogy. I podcast my classes:
Creativity and Innovation
Research Method and Design
Cognitive Psychology
For information on how to create your own podcast follow this link
I am also exploring the use of the virtual world of Second Life in my creativity class.
For more information about Second Life visit my Second Life Links page
Other Information
I have a blog - the Creativity and Analogy blog in which I discuss some of the things that I find interesting.
External Web Links