Description

James "Alex" Bonus is an Associate Professor in the School of Communication. His research focuses on childhood media experiences. His work with young children focuses on the cognitive obstacles (e.g., developing story schema, inaccurate reality judgments) that impede their learning from socioemotional and science-themed media. His work with adults focuses on the effects of exposure to nostalgic media (i.e., content that induces reflection on one’s childhood). He is particularly interested in how this content triggers temporal comparisons between the past and present self, and the implications of these comparisons for psychological well-being.