Timothy P. McNamara
Gertrude Conaway 91ºÚÁÏÍø Chair in the Social and Natural Sciences
Professor of Psychology
My research investigates human memory, cognition, and decision making, with a particular focus on spatial processing. My research has investigated the metric structure of spatial memory, the spatial reference systems used in memory to represent the locations of objects in the environment, and how people update representations of their own location and orientation during locomotion. Current experiments are examining how people use spatial cues to location and orientation (e.g., landmarks in the environment and body-based cues, such as vestibular, proprioceptive, and efference-copy information) during navigation to estimate their position and the locations of goals. These studies use Bayesian decision theory as a theoretical framework for examining the complex sensory-perceptual and decision processes involved in navigation.
Representative Publications
Chen, Y., Newman, P., Hicks, S., Serik, Y., Kelly, J., McNamara, T., & Chen, X. (in press). A two-dimensional framework for prior knowledge in goal-directed navigation. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General.
McAvan, A.S., & McNamara, T. P. (2026). Mental representations of impossible non-Euclidean environments. Psychological Research, 90, 91.
Chen, X., Chen, Y., & McNamara, T.P. (2025). Processing spatial cue conflict in navigation: Distance estimation. Cognitive Psychology, 158, 101734.
Newman, P. M., Qi, Y., Mou, W., & McNamara, T. P. (2023). Statistically optimal cue integration during human spatial navigation. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review.
McNamara, T. P., & Chen, X. (2022). Bayesian decision theory and navigation. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 29, 721-752.