Teresa Garcia-Marques

Teresa Garcia-Marques’s research focuses on cognition and social cognition through the development and empirical testing of three theoretical frameworks. (1) The Familiarity as a Regulation Mechanism (FARM) Model proposes that processing feelings, known to influence judgments and decisions, also regulate cognitive monitoring and control. Empirically she examines familiarity and fluency effects across different judgments and cognitive processes, including truth, evaluation, time perception, memory, person perception, and confidence. (2) The Dynamic Activation–Control (DAC) Model assuming that cognition results from the dynamic interplay between automatic activation and regulatory control processes, argues that this balance is modulated by social presence, which simultaneously increases monitoring and associative activation. Empirical support derives from studies using the Stroop task, false memory paradigms, temporal judgment tasks, and stereotyping paradigms. (3) The Suspension of Dis/Belief (Sd/B) framework proposes that the capacity to temporarily relax belief-driven constraints is a component of the cognitive executive coordination system, allowing engagement with incongruent or inconsistent information without triggering immediate epistemic resolution or affective discomfort.