• Professor, Psychology

• Ph.D. at University of Michigan

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El Hombre vs. The Babe St. Louis Cardinals slugger Pujols gets Babe Ruth test at Washington University Aug. 22, 2006 -- Daniel Stier / GQ, September 2006 El Hombre vs. The Babe Baseball purists, especially those of Yankee allegiance, might argue that St. Louis Cardinals homerun-hitting superstar Albert Pujols is simply not in the same league as legendary New York Yankees slugger Babe Ruth. Science may never settle that argument, but researchers at Washington University in St. Louis can offer some sense of how Pujols stacks up to the Babe in terms of skills necessary to hit the long ball. Pujols visited WUSTL in April to take part in a series of lab tests similar to those conducted on Ruth in 1921.

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Angioplasty's golden era may be fading USA Today and 1 others March 27, 2008 -- Three major studies published in the past two years indicate that using the angioplasty to open blocked arteries to treat chest pain, or angina, may be riskier and no more beneficial than medication. WUSTL cardiologist Michael Rich comments on the study.

Pujols aces tests given to Babe Ruth Associated Press Online and 76 others Aug. 23, 2006 -- This spring, WUSTL scientists, at the request of GQ magazine, put Cardinals slugger Albert Pujols through a series of tests similar to those given to Babe Ruth 85 years ago -- tests ranging from finger tapping to visual responses to bat speed. The results? Both men aced the tests, and their results were strikingly similar. WUSTL clinical neuropsychologist Desiree White and cognitive psychologist Richard Abrams and their colleagues administered the tests. GQ features some of the results of the Pujols tests in its September issue.

Abrams offers the following description of his research interests:
(source: downloaded from Neuroscience Program web page, 1/02/02)

Research in my lab examines questions about the mental mechanisms that underlie overt movements of the eyes and limbs, and covert movements of visual attention. We seek answers to fundamental questions about such behaviors including: To what extent do eye, limb and attention movement systems obey similar operating principles or perhaps employ shared mental mechanisms? To what extent do these systems share spatial information? In what reference frames are the various movements planned and implemented? In a typical experiment a subject might view a video display and point to or look at objects on the display while the position of their eye and hand is recorded. Recently we have been interested in the special role that perceptual objects may play. For example, when a new object appears in a scene it attracts attention, resulting first in a performance benefit for decisions about the object or nearby locations. After a short time has passed however, a person is inhibited in reorienting to the new object. In a related investigation we have found that attention may be initially directed to only part of a perceptual object, but the attentional benefit will then seem to spread throughout the entire object. Our hope is that these studies can lead to a better understanding of the representations that underlie covert movements of attention and overt movements of the eyes and limbs.

Selected Publications:
Pratt, J., & Abrams, R. A. (1996). Practice and component submovements: The roles of programming and feedback in rapid aimed limb movements. Journal of Motor Behavior, 28, 149-156.

Abrams, R. A., Oonk, H. M., & Pratt, J. (1998). Fixation point offsets facilitate endogenous saccades. Perception & Psychophysics, 60, 201-208.

Oonk, H. M., & Abrams, R. A. (1998). New perceptual objects that capture attention produce inhibition of return. Psychonomic Bulletin and Review. 5, 510-515.

Abrams, R. A., Pratt, J., & Chasteen, A. L. (1998). Aging and movement: Variability of force pulses for saccadic eye movements. Psychology and Aging, 13, 387-395.

Pratt, J., & Abrams, R. A. (1999). Inhibition of return in discrimination tasks. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 25, 229 - 242.

Abrams, R. A., & Law, M. B. (2000). Object-based visual attention with endogenous orienting. Perception & Psychophysics, 62, 818-833.

Abrams, R. A., & Pratt, J. (2000). Oculocentric coding of inhibited eye movements to recently attended locations. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 26, 766-788.