Michael Johns

Michael (Mike) A. Johns is a post-doctoral associate at the Institute for Systems Research at the University of Maryland, working in the lab of Dr. Jonathan Simon. He received a B.A. in Linguistics and Spanish from the University of Florida, and an M.A. in Spanish and a dual-title Ph.D. in Spanish and Language Science from the Pennsylvania State University. He is currently involved in a project examining the neural underpinnings of auditory processing in younger and older monolingual adults with the aim of developing a training paradigm that could be used to improve older adults' ability to understand speech in noisy contexts. In addition, he is beginning his own research project on how aging and bilingualism interact to influence an individual's ability to separate relevant foreground information (e.g., speech) from irrelevant background information. His past research includes the use of vagal nerve stimulation and its role in Mandarin tone discrimination, the role of emotion in adversarial information campaigns on social media, and the role of cognitive control in bilingual language comprehension and production.