BA (Ohio State University), PhD (Carnegie Mellon University)
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Research interests
I am a cognitive psychologist and behavioral scientist interested in exploring the role that higher-order thinking, particularly metacognition, plays in judgment and decision making. Much of my research focuses on one core question: Do decision makers know why they make the decisions that they do? I am particularly interested in studying this question within the context of complex, multi-attribute choice decisions and have developed a method for doing so, called the Knowledge of Weights (KoW) paradigm. In my postdoctoral research, I plan to apply the KoW paradigm to healthcare settings to investigate patient knowledge of their medical preferences.
In another burgeoning line of research, I investigate the metacognitive capacities of Large Language Models (LLMs), like ChatGPT and Claude. I am especially interested in exploring the degree to which LLMs can effectively communicate their metacognitive beliefs to human users through common linguistic mechanisms, such as confidence judgments (e.g., “I’m 80% sure”). In my postdoctoral research, I will be merging these two lines of inquiry by studying whether LLMs can be programmed to act as reflective conversational partners that can help decision makers better understand their own decision processes.
In addition to these two major lines of research, I also study the development of academic and metacognitive skills in children and young adults, as well as strategic reasoning in competitive environments. I received my B.A. in Psychology and Public Policy from The Ohio State University (Go Bucks!) and my Ph.D. in Psychology and Social and Decision Sciences from Carnegie Mellon University.
Representative publications
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Cash, T. N., Oppenheimer, D. M., Christie, S., & Devgan, M. (2025). Quantifying uncert-AI-nty: Testing the accuracy of LLMs’ confidence judgments. Memory & Cognition. Advance online publication.
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Cash, T. N., & Oppenheimer, D. M. (2025). Assessing metacognitive knowledge in subjective decisions: The Knowledge of Weights paradigm. Thinking & Reasoning, 31(3), 331-373.
- Cash, T. N., & Oppenheimer, D. M. (2024). Generative chatbots AI-n’t experts: Exploring cognitive and metacognitive limitationsthat hinder expertise in generative chatbots. Journal of Applied Research in Memory & Cognition, 13(4), 490-494.
- Cash, T. N., & Oppenheimer, D. M. (2024). Parental rights or parental wrongs: Parents’ metacognitive knowledge of the factors that influence their school choice decisions. PLOS ONE, 19(4), e0301768.