Madison Fansher, PhD

Dr. Fansher is a Research Assistant Professor at the Center for Clinical Outcomes Development and Application (CODA) in the Department of Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation at University of Michigan. Her research integrates questions from basic and applied cognitive psychology to investigate the dispositional and situational factors influencing judgment, decision-making, and problem solving in real-world scenarios. With a broad background in cognitive and experimental psychology, Dr. Fansher is interested in investigating the higher-level cognitive processes underlying health decision-making and behaviors. She is especially interested in understanding how visual aids such as graphs and icon arrays can be used to improve how people reason about health and risk data. Much of her work also examines how laypeople interpret scientific findings as they are presented in the media. She has conducted quantitative and qualitative research in the domains of cognitive psychology, cognitive neuroscience, human-computer interaction, and STEM education. She has worked on projects funded by organizations such as the Institute for Educational Studies (IES), the National Science Foundation (NSF), and the National Institutes of Health (NIH).