Biography
Hasher received her Bachelor of Arts in psychology from
Smith College. She received her Ph.D. in psychology from the
University of California, Berkeley in 1970, under the supervision of
Leo Postman. Hasher held faculty positions at Carleton University, Temple University, and Duke University. In 1999, Hasher joined the faculty of the University of Toronto and the Rotman Research Institute. While at the University of Toronto, she became a Fellow of
Massey College. Hasher retired in December 2017. Hasher is a Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science, the
Psychonomic Society, and the
Society of Experimental Psychologists. She is a member of the Memory Disorders Research Society. Her research has been funded by the
National Institute on Aging,
Canadian Institutes of Health Research, and
Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council. They have two children. == Research ==
Research
Hasher's research career has focused on basic attentional processes, including inhibitory control, the role of attention in understanding language and remembering events, and how control of attention changes with age. Many of her seminal studies on attention and working memory were conducted in collaboration with Rose Zacks. Hasher's research team has explored circadian rhythms and the impact of sleep schedule on cognition and emotion. In a study exploring happiness in young adults and older adults, they found that older adults tended to report more positive emotions than younger adults, and were more likely to be morning-type people. Across groups, being a morning-type person was associated with higher rates of happiness. Another study asked how performance on tasks requiring attention varies in relation to the time of day. Using
functional magnetic resonance imaging (FMRI), Hasher and her research team examined changes of neutral activity in the attention control network. Results showed that time of testing influenced task-related FMRI signals in older adults. == Awards ==
Representative publications
• Hasher, L., Goldstein, D., & Toppino, T. (1977). Frequency and the conference of referential validity. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 16(1), 107–112. • Hasher, L., Quig, M. B., & May, C. P. (1997). Inhibitory control over no-longer-relevant information: Adult age differences. Memory & Cognition, 25(3), 286–295. • Hasher, L., Stoltzfus, E. R., Zacks, R. T., & Rypma, B. (1991). Age and inhibition. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 17(1), 163–169. • Hasher, L., & Zacks, R. T. (1979). Automatic and effortful processes in memory. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 108(3), 356–388. • Hasher, L., & Zacks, R. T. (1984). Automatic processing of fundamental information: the case of frequency of occurrence. American Psychologist, 39(12), 1372–1388. ==References==