In 1992, while a student and lead research assistant for Dr. Deborah Burke’s NIA-funded Claremont Project on Memory and Aging at the Claremont Graduate School, Dr. James began developing expertise on how healthy aging affects cognitive processing. Her training there emphasized age-related changes in memory and language processes during the healthy aging process. From 1997-2001, she held a post-doctoral position as the Research Director of Dr. Donald MacKay’s NIA-funded UCLA Cognition and Aging Lab, where she honed her experimental skills and broadened her research into other aspects of cognitive aging. Over the past 30 years, Dr. James has designed, conducted, analyzed, presented, and published dozens of experiments on memory and language, and how performance differs for young and older adults.

Dr. James has been at the University of Colorado Colorado Spring since 2001, leading the Language and Memory Processes Lab in the Psychology Department. Her work frequently touches on topics related to resilience.

To view the CV for Dr. James, click here. 

Dr. James' primary research interests are cognition and cognitive aging, specifically language and memory processes. Her recent work has explored relationships between stress, anxiety, dispositional mindfulness, mindful breathing exercises, stress mindsets, and cognition/cognitive aging.

Current projects, which are relevant to the Institute, include an experiment in which researchers manipulate older adults' stress mindsets and how that affects speech production and two experiments assessing the effects of mindful breathing on language processes in young and older adults. 

Past projects include an experiment in which researchers manipulate young adults' stress mindsets and how that affects speech production, several studies of how testing conditions designed to be stressful affect word retrieval, an experiment in which researchers had young adults do a mindful breathing exercise (vs control) and showed benefits for word retrieval, an experiment testing earthquake warning messages for effectiveness, and several studies related to the My Disaster Recovery website.