Allison Ponzio
Allison Ponzio began her doctoral studies at the USC Davis School of Gerontology in 2011. She graduated from the University of San Francisco in 2010 with a bachelor’s degree in Psychology and minors in Child & Youth Studies and Gerontology. Her research is centered on psychology and aging, especially on changes in emotion regulation and emotional memory across the lifespan. Under the direction of Dr. Mara Mather, she is studying the influence of emotion, goal relevance and perceptual salience on later memory in both younger and older adults. As part of the Emotion and Cognition lab, Allison and others are investigating the theory of arousal-biased competition (ABC; Mather & Sutherland, 2011). The theory stipulates that emotional arousal modulates the strength of competing information, enhancing memory and attention for certain information over others. Going forward, Allison is interested in further understanding ABC, as well as neural level changes in emotional processing and memory across the lifespan. Allison is the current recipient of a University of Southern California Provost’s Ph.D. Fellowship and a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship.