Dr. Joseph 'Beau' Stephens
Professor, School of Psychology
Dr. Stephens is a cognitive neuroscientist who earned his Ph.D. in Psychology at Carnegie Mellon University, where he also completed the graduate training program in the Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition. He also has a B.A. in Germanic Studies from Indiana University. He grew up in southeastern Indiana and is a graduate of St. Xavier High School. Prior to returning to the Cincinnati area, Dr. Stephens was a faculty member for 16 years at North Carolina A&T State University, the nation's largest Historically Black University.
Dr. Stephens's research investigates cognitive and neural mechanisms that underlie auditory and visual perception, speech and language, memory, decision making, and cognitive aging. His research is highly collaborative and has been funded by grants from a variety of sources including the National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation, and Air Force Research Laboratory.
Representative publications
Tamanna, M., Stephens, J. D. W., & Anwar, M. (2024). Exploring user perspective on improving security through software updates. AHFE Human Factors in Cybersecurity.
Overman, A. A., Stephens, J. D. W., & Bernhardt, M. F. (2021). Enhanced memory for context associated with corrective feedback: Evidence for episodic processes in errorful learning. Memory, 29(8), 1017-1042.
McFayden, T. C., Baskin, P., Stephens, J. D. W., & He, S. (2020). Cortical auditory event-related potentials and categorical perception of voice onset time in children with auditory neuropathy spectrum disorder. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 14, 184.
Stephens, J. D. W., & Overman, A. A. (2018). Modeling age differences in effects of pair repetition and proactive interference using a single parameter. Psychology and Aging, 33(1), 182-194.
Overman, A. A., Richard, A. G., & Stephens, J. D. W. (2017). A positive generation effect on memory for auditory context. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 24, 944-949.
Viswanathan, N., & Stephens, J. D. W. (2016). Compensation for visually-specified coarticulation in liquid-stop contexts. Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics, 78, 2341-2347.
Overman, A. A., & Stephens, J. D. W. (2013). Synergistic effects of encoding strategy and context salience on associative memory in older adults. Psychology and Aging, 28, 654-665.
Kim, D., Stephens, J. D. W., & Pitt, M. A. (2012). How does context play a part in splitting words apart? Production and perception of word boundaries in casual speech. Journal of Memory and Language, 66, 509-529.
Stephens, J. D. W., & Holt, L. L. (2010). Learning to use an artificial visual cue in speech identification. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 128, 2138-2149.
Malmberg, K. J., Steyvers, M., Stephens, J. D., & Shiffrin, R. M. (2002). Feature frequency effects in recognition memory. Memory & Cognition, 30, 607-613.