Erik Benau

Erik Benau was born in Suburban Philadelphia. After graduating from Hampshire in 2007, he worked at the University of Pittsburgh as the Behavioral and ERP Lab Manager for the Reading and Language Labs. As of school year 2009, he is attending the New School for Social Research in New York City. He is currently working on submitting a portion of his Div3 for publication with the help of his committee chair, Jane Couperus. A poster of his Div3 was also presented at the Cognitive Neuroscience Society's annual meeting in June, 2008 (San Francisco).

His work at the Learning Research and Development Center at the University of PIttsburgh including investigations of error-related awareness via the Errror Related Negativity component of ERP's. As well, he helped investigate individual differences in Working Memory as related to other cognitive performance (e.g. reading comprehension, spelling) in both a group and individual setting. The ERP investigation and Working Memory studies are being written into three manuscripts (one ERP, and two WM respectively) for publication, on which Erik has attained authorship.

He currently attends the University of the Sciences, in Philadelphia, PA. He is doing his thesis on ERP and Cognitive Correlates during experimental fasting. Erik is also research assistant at Temple University investigating sexual orientation, non-suicidal self injury, thrill-seeking behavior, and other things in one big statistical batch. His interests include adolescent psychology, specifically risk taking and thrill-seeking behavior. Additionally, what can we do to reduce risky behavior, high school attrition, drug use and high-risk sexual activity. This is, of course, preliminary.

Wishi him luck as he preps to apply to PhD programs this fall.