Robert A. Bjork

Distinguished Professor Emeritus
Primary Area: Cognitive Psychology
Address: 7554 Pritzker Hall
Phone: (310) 794-7833
Email: rabjork@psych.ucla.edu

Research and Teaching Interests:

Robert A. Bjork (PhD, Psychology, Stanford; BA, Mathematics, Minnesota) is Distinguished Research Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of California, Los Angeles. His research focuses on human learning and memory and on the implications of the science of learning for instruction and training. He is a Fellow of the National Academy of Science and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has served as Editor of Memory & Cognition and Psychological Review, Co-editor of Psychological Science in the Public Interest, Chair of the National Research Council’s Committee on Techniques for the Enhancement of Human Performance, and Chair of the UCLA Department of Psychology. He is a past president or chair of the American Psychological Society (APS); the Western Psychological Association; the Psychonomic Society; the Society of Experimental Psychologists; the Council of Editors of the American Psychological Association (APA); and the Council of Graduate Departments of Psychology. He is a recipient of UCLA’s Distinguished Teaching Award; the American Psychological Association’s Distinguished Scientist Lecturer Award, the American Psychological Association’s Distinguished Service to Psychological Science Award; the American Physiological Society’s Claude Bernard Distinguished Lectureship Award; the Society of Experimental Psychologists’ Norman Anderson Lifetime Achievement Award; and, together with Elizabeth Bjork, the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Western Psychological Association and both the James McKeen Cattell Award (“for outstanding contributions to applied psychological research”) and the Mentoring Award from the Association for Psychological Science. He was selected to give the 120th Faculty Research Lecture at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Representative Publications:

Pan, S. C. and Bjork, R. A. (2022, in press). Acquiring an accurate mental model of learning: Towards an owner’s manual. In A. Wagner and M. Kahana (Eds.), Oxford Handbook of Learning & Memory: Foundations and Applications. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Imundo, M. N., Pan, S. C., Bjork, E. L., & Bjork, R. A. (2020) Where and how to learn: The distinct benefits of contextual variation, restudying, and retrieval practice for memory. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 74 (3), 413-424.

Soderstrom, N. C., & Bjork, R. A. (2015). Learning versus performance: An integrative review. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 10, 176-199.

Bjork, E. L., & Bjork, R. A. (2014).  Making things hard on yourself, but in a good way: Creating desirable difficulties to enhance learning. In M. A. Gernsbacher and J. Pomerantz (Eds.), Psychology and the real world: Essays illustrating fundamental contributions to society (2nd edition). (pp. 59-68). New York: Worth.

Bjork, R. A., Dunlosky, J., & Kornell, N.  (2013). Self-regulated learning: Beliefs, techniques, and illusions.  Annual Review of Psychology, 64, 417-444.

Kornell, N., & Bjork, R. A. (2008b). Learning concepts and categories: Is spacing the “enemy of induction”? Psychological Science, 19, 585-592.

Anderson, M.C., Bjork, R.A., & Bjork, E.L. (1994).  Remembering can cause forgetting: Retrieval dynamics in long-term memory. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 20, 1063-1087.

Bjork, R.A.  (1994).  Memory and metamemory considerations in the training of human beings.  In J. Metcalfe and A. Shimamura (Eds.), Metacognition: Knowing about knowing (pp.185-205). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Schmidt, R. A., & Bjork, R. A.  (1992). New conceptualizations of practice: Common principles in three paradigms suggest new concepts for training.  Psychological Science, 3, 207-217.

Bjork, R. A., & Bjork, E. L.  (1992).  A new theory of disuse and an old theory of stimulus fluctuation.  In A. Healy, S. Kosslyn, & R. Shiffrin (Eds.), From learning processes to cognitive processes:  Essays in honor of William K. Estes  (Vol. 2, pp. 35-67).  Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.