Hector Research Institute of Education Sciences and Psychology

Dr. Alexander Soemer

Alexander Soemer is a research scientist at the Hector Research Institute of Education Sciences and Psychology. 

Research Interests:

  • Working memory
  • Attentional processes during learning (especially mind wandering)
  • Reading comprehension and reading motivation
  • Learning with media

 

Publications

Articles in peer-reviewed journals

  • Soemer, A., Gericke, C., & Schiefele, U. (2023). Does mind wandering mediate the effects of trait-level reading motivation on comprehension? Learning & Instruction, 83, 101639. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.learninstruc.2022.101693
  • Gericke, C., Soemer, A., & Schiefele, U. (2022). Benefits of mind wandering for learning in school through its positive effects on creativity. Frontiers in Education, 7, 774731. https://doi.org/10.3389/feduc.2022.774731
  • Grosse, G., Barth, S., Soemer, A., Linde, N. , Simon, A., & Schoenfeld, R. (2022). Teacher-child interaction quality fosters working memory and social-emotional behavior in toddlers. International Journal of Early Childhood. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13158-022-00327-w
  • Soemer, A., & Schiefele, U. (2020). Working memory capacity and (in)voluntary mind wandering. Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, 27, 758-767.  https://doi.org/10.3758/s13423-020-01737-4
  • Soemer, A., Idsardi, H.-M., Minnaert, A., & Schiefele, U. (2019). Mind wandering and reading comprehension in secondary school children. Learning and Individual Differences, 75, 101778. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lindif.2019.101778
  • Soemer, A. (2019). Task-unrelated thoughts and forgetting in working memory. Journal of Memory and Language, 106, 118-134. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jml.2019.03.004
  • Soemer, A. & Schiefele, U. (2019). Text difficulty, topic Interest, and mind wandering during reading. Learning and Instruction, 61, 12-22. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.learninstruc.2018.12.006
  • Chu, W.-H., Kao, C.-W., & Soemer, A. (2018). A longitudinal study of the development of Mandarin Chinese learners’ oral fluency. Journal of Chinese Language Teaching, 15, 21-47.
  • Soemer, A. & Schiefele, U. (2018). Reading amount as a mediator between intrinsic reading motivation and reading competence in the in the early elementary grades. Learning and Individual Differences, 67, 1-11. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lindif.2018.06.006
  • Soemer, A. & Schwan, S. (2016). Task-appropriate visualizations: Can the very same visualization format either promote or hinder learning depending on the task requirements? Journal of Educational Psychology, 108, 960-965. https://psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.1037/edu0000093
  • Soemer, A. & Saito, S. (2016). Domain-specific processing in short-term serial order memory. Journal of Memory and Language, 88, 1-17. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jml.2015.12.003
  • Soemer, A. (2016). The multi-component model, attention and long-term memory in multimedia learning: A comment on Schweppe and Rummer (2014). Educational Psychology Review, 28, 197-200. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10648-015-9303-9
  • Soemer, A. & Saito, S. (2015). Maintenance of auditory-nonverbal information in working memory. Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, 22, 1777-1783. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13423-015-0854-z
  • Tseng, S. C., Soemer, A. & Lee, T.-L. (2013). Tones of reduced T1-T4 Mandarin disyllables. International Journal for Computational Linguistics and Chinese Language Processing, 18, 81-106. https://aclanthology.org/O13-4005.pdf
  • Soemer, A. & Schwan, S. (2012). Visual mnemonics for language learning: Static pictures versus animated morphs. Journal of Educational Psychology, 104, 565-579. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0029272

Presentations & Posters

  • Gade, M., Soemer, A., & Paelecke, M. (2021). In the mind – linking inner speech, attentional control, and every day cognitive failures. Conference of Experimental Psychologists (TeaP), Ulm, Germany, 14-16 March 2021.
  • Soemer, A. (2019) Working memory, attention, and motivation during learning from text. Invited Talk at the Educational Vision Research Institute at Hiroshima University, Hiroshima, Japan, 18 October 2019.
  • Soemer, A. (2018). Working memory capacity and task-unrelated thoughts during learning from texts. European Working Memory Symposium (EWOMS), Pavia, Italy, 29-31 August 2018.
  • Soemer, A. (2018). The role of internally-generated interference in forgetting over unfilled retention intervals. Memory and Cognition in Context Workshop, Kyoto, Japan, 9-10 February 2018.
  • Soemer, A. & Schiefele, U. (2017) Can working memory both promote and hinder mind wandering? Poster, Conference of the European Society for Cognitive Psychology (ESCOP), Potsdam, Germany, 3-6 September 2017.
  • Soemer, A. (2017). The role of internally-generated interference in forgetting over unfilled retention intervals. Conference of the European Society for Cognitive Psychology (ESCOP), Potsdam, Germany, 3-6 September 2017.
  • Soemer, A. Mind wandering: A promising area of research for educational psychology. Invited Talk at the Knowledge Media Research Center, Tübingen, Germany, 23 May 2017.
  • Soemer, A. (2017) Can mind wandering account for time-related forgetting in working memory? Conference of Experimental Psychologists (TeaP), Dresden, Germany, 26-29 March 2017.
  • Soemer, A. & Saito, S. (2016) Domain-specific interference in serial order memory. International Meeting of the Psychonomic Society, Granada, Spanien, 5-8 May 2016.
  • Soemer, A. & Chu, W.S. (2015) A longitudinal study of the development of Mandarin Chinese learners’ oral proficiency. International Conference of the Department of Chinese as a Second Language at National Taiwan Normal University, Taipei, Taiwan, 5 July 2015.
  • Soemer, A. (2015) Auditory imagery as a mechanism for auditory rehearsal? Kyoto-Bristol Workshop at Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan, 19 March 2015.

 

Curriculum Vitae

Since 2022/11
Research scientist

Hector Research Institute of Education Sciences and Psychology

2020/08 - 2022/04
Cloud Engineer

areto Consulting, Köln

2015/10 - 2020/08
Research scientist

University of Potsdam, Department Psychology

2014/03 - 2015/04
JSPS Postdoctoral Fellow

Kyoto University (Japan), Graduate School of Education

2011/08 - 2013/06
Postdoctoral Researcher

Academia Sinica, Taipei (Taiwan), Institute of Linguistics

2007/10 - 2010/12
Doctorate in psychology

University of Tübingen

2010/07 - 2011/07
Freelance consultant
2008/08 - 2010/02
Junior consultant

IPC GmbH, Neuhausen a.d.F.

2007/10 - 2008/07
JASSO-Scholarship Holder

Hiroshima University, Hiroshima, Japan

2005/05 - 2006/07
Postgraduate Course Intercultural Japanese Competence

University of Tübingen & Doshisha University, Kyoto, Japan

2001/09 - 2005/07
Audiovisual Media Studies (Media Technology)

Fachhochschule Stuttgart - Hochschule der Medien