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Dr Allison Bielak

Postdoctoral Fellow

BA (Honours), MSc, PhD (Victoria, Canada)

 

Research and Supervision Interests

Cognitive aging, lifestyle engagement, intraindividual variability, longitudinal research analysis.  

Allison is a postdoctoral research fellow with the Ageing Research Unit studying both healthy and pathological age-related changes in cognition.  She is interested in researching the factors that contribute to the differences in how individuals age cognitively, especially the influence of factors that can be changed, such as lifestyle.  Allison also studies intraindividual variability, or rapid fluctuations in cognitive performance in older adulthood, and how this relates to cognitive ability, health, and potential disease prediction.  She has experience with longitudinal research studies and analyses, and is working on Dynopta (Dynamic Analyses to Optmize Ageing).  Allison has joined us from the University of Victoria, Canada, and has received a postdoctoral fellowship from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.

T. +61 2 6125 8413 E. Allison.Bielak@anu.edu.au

 

Selected Publications

Hultsch, D. F., Bielak, A.A.M., Crow, C. B., & Dixon, R. A. (in press). The way we were: Perceptions of past memory change in older adults. Chapter to appear in: H. B. Bosworth, & C. Hertzog (Eds.) Cognition in Aging: Methodologies and Applications. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

Bielak, A.A.M., Hughes, T. F., Small, B. J., & Dixon, R. A. (2007). It's never too late to engage in lifestyle activities: Significant concurrent but not change relationships between lifestyle activities and cognitive speed. Journals of Gerontology: Psychological Sciences, 62B, P331-P339.

Strauss, E.,Bielak, A.A.M., Bunce, D., Hunter, M. A., & Hultsch, D. F. (2007). Within-person variability in response speed as an indicator of mild cognitive impairment in older adults. Aging, Neuropsychology, and Cognition, 14, 608-630.

Bielak, A.A.M., Hultsch, D. F., Levy-Ajzenkopf, J., MacDonald, S. W. S., Hunter, M. A., & Strauss, E. (2007). Short-term changes in general and memory-specific control beliefs and their relationship to cognition in younger and older adults. The International Journal of Aging & Human Development, 65, 53-71.