Academic Credentials
  • Ph.D., Psychology, Vanderbilt University, 2018
  • M.S., Psychology, University of Memphis, 2010
  • B.S., Psychology, University of Memphis, 2007

Dr. Colling specializes in the study of human performance, with an emphasis on highly trained users. Her areas of expertise are attention, perception, information processing, and motor control in routine skilled behaviors, often colloquially referred to as "muscle memory." 

Dr. Colling has an experimental background investigating how conscious attention to, and nonconscious processing of, visual and tactile information affect performance, as well the source of errors in these domains. She has over ten years of experience with human subjects' experimental design, data collection, and analysis. 

Dr. Colling also has experience in the market research domain designing, developing, and analyzing both qualitative and quantitative data derived from questionnaires and focus groups. At Exponent, she utilizes her skillset to assess human factors in pedestrian and transportation accidents and injuries, consumer product use, communication of risk and compliance with warnings, consumer decision making, and product development.

Prior to joining Exponent, Dr. Colling graduated from Vanderbilt University with a Ph.D. in Psychology. Her research focused on many topics related to automated behaviors. A related line of investigation focused on how the motor plans that dictate the individual movements of an automated action are controlled. These studies addressed the many errors possible in skilled sequential actions, such as transpositions, omissions, insertions, and replacements.