Yong Hoon Chung
Postdoctoral Researcher
BrainStörmer Lab, Department of Psychological & Brain Sciences, Dartmouth College
I am a postdoctoral researcher in Dr. Viola Störmer's lab at Dartmouth College. I study visual cognition — how the mind holds, tracks, and attends to what it sees, and how the meaning we attach to objects shapes what we remember.
Research
My research centers on the mechanisms of visual cognition — visual working memory, visual attention, and object recognition. I am especially interested in how the meaning we attach to objects interacts with our ability to actively hold visual information in mind.
My PhD work was focused on why meaningful, real-world objects are remembered better than simple visual features, and on showing that this benefit reflects genuine semantic understanding rather than surface familiarity or verbal labeling. To study these questions I combine psychophysics with EEG.
Background
I received my B.S. in Cognitive and Behavioral Neuroscience from UC San Diego, where I worked in the labs of Dr. Tim Brady, Dr. John Serences, and Dr. Viola Störmer on projects investigating visual working memory, object tracking, and how visual attention influences perception. I went on to complete my PhD at Dartmouth College with Dr. Viola Störmer, and since 2026 I have continued in the same lab as a postdoctoral researcher.
Selected publications
- Chung, Y. H., Brady, T. F., & Störmer, V. S. (2026). Real-world objects scaffold feature working memory: Increased neural engagement when colors are remembered as part of meaningful objects. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 38(6), 1171–1184.
- Chung, Y. H., Williams, H. L., Brady, T. F., & Störmer, V. S. (2025). Limits of verbal labels in cognition: Category labels do not improve visual working memory performance for obfuscated objects. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 154(9), 2432–2446.
- Chung, Y. H., Brady, T. F., & Störmer, V. S. (2024). Meaningfulness and familiarity expand visual working memory capacity. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 33(5), 275–282.
- Chung, Y. H., Brady, T. F., & Störmer, V. S. (2023). No fixed limit for storing simple visual features: Realistic objects provide an efficient scaffolding for holding features in mind. Psychological Science, 34(7), 784–793.
Outside the lab
When I'm not in front of a computer, I like playing guitar, watching TV, drinking beer, and cooking Korean food — or tracking down a good Korean restaurant.