Research

Main Research Interests

My research examines how people construct and understand the self across time through remembered and imagined experiences. I am particularly interested in how nostalgia, imagination, and other forms of mental simulation shape identity, meaning, emotion, social relationships, and behavior.

My current projects incorporate the following topics:

Nostalgia & the Self

How people reconstruct personally experienced pasts and derive meaning from them, particularly following difficult or adverse experiences.

Imagination & the Self

How people mentally construct experiences beyond their lived past and how these imagined experiences shape self-understanding and behavior.

Nostalgia, Relationships, & Social Identity

How representations of the past shape close relationships, social identities, and intergroup attitudes.

Dissertation: Historical Nostalgia and the Self

My dissertation examines how people can experience nostalgia for historical periods they never personally lived through. Across a series of studies, I investigate how mentally immersing in imagined historical worlds allows those worlds to become personally meaningful and how perceived fit between the self and an imagined historical environment may contribute to nostalgic longing and positive experiences of the self.

Peer-Reviewed Publications

Alia, N., Kayton, K., Mittal, P., Barth, H., & Patalano, A. L. (in press) Influence of benchmarks on the left digit effect in number line estimation. Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology.

Kayton, K. & Markman, K. D. (2026). Finding the good in the bad: Nostalgic recollections of the covid-19 pandemic. Journal of Positive Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1080/17439760.2026.2683407

Kayton, K., Rutkowski, B., Vaidya, L., Barth, H., & Patalano, A.L. (in press). Reliability of the left digit effect in number line estimation. Journal of Numerical Cognition.

Kayton, K., Fischer, G., Barth, H., & Patalano, A. L. (2024). The left digit effect in an unbounded number line task. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 31(5), 2313-2322.

Gwiazda, G., Kayton, K., Alia, N., Bondhus, C., Barth, H., & Patalano, A. L. (2024). Does instructional intervention reduce the left digit effect in number line estimation?. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 77(10), 2111-2123.

Patalano, A. L., Kayton, K., & Barth, H. (2023). Modeling the left digit effect in adult number line estimation. Cognition, 230, 105257. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2022.105257

Kayton, K., Williams, K., Stenbaek, C., Gwiazda, G., Bondhus, C., Green, J., Fischer, G., Barth, H., & Patalano, A. L. (2022). Summary accuracy feedback and the left digit effect in number line estimation. Memory & Cognition, 50(8), 1789-1803. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13421-022-01278-2

Patalano, A. L., Williams, K., Weeks, G., Kayton, K., & Barth, H. (2020). The left digit effect in a complex judgment task: Evaluating hypothetical college applicants. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, 35(1), e2247. https://doi.org/10.1002/bdm.2247

Conference Poster Presentations

Kayton, K., Deng, Q., & Markman, K. (2026, February). Growing apart or growing together: The bittersweet nature of romantic nostalgia. Poster to be presented at the Society for Personality and Social Psychology Annual Convention.

Deng, Q., Kayton, K., Cleaveland, L., Ostrowski, J. L., Woodland, P. E., & Mischkowski, D. (2026, February). Longitudinal evaluation of the prosocial pain scale psychometric properties. Poster to be presented at the Society for Personality and Social Psychology Annual Convention.

Kayton, K. & Markman, K. (2025, February). Nostalgia and the covid-19 pandemic. Poster presented at the Society for Personality and Social Psychology Annual Convention.

Kayton, K. & Markman, K. (2024, February). Perceptions of positive change and subjective temporal distance. Poster presented at the Society for Personality and Social Psychology Annual Convention.

Alia, N., Kayton, K., Mittal, P., Barth, H., & Patalano, A.L. (2023, November). Influence of labeled versus unlabeled benchmarks on the left digit effect in number line estimation. Poster presented at the Psychonomic Society Annual Meeting.

Patalano, A.L., Kayton, K., & Barth, H. (2023, March). Modeling the left digit effect in number line estimation. Poster presented at the APS International Convention of Psychological Science.

Kayton, K. & Markman, K. (2023, February). Counterfactuals, Conspiracy Theories, and the Covid-19 Pandemic. Poster presented at the Society for Personality and Social Psychology Annual Convention.

Kayton, K., Mittal, P., Barth, H., & Patalano, A.L (2022, November) Testing the presence of benchmarks on the left digit effect in number line estimation. Poster presented at the Psychonomic Society Annual Meeting (virtual presentation).

Kayton, K. Fischer, F., Barth, H., & Patalano, A.L. (2022, November) The left digit effect in an unbounded number line task. Poster presented at the Psychonomic Society Annual Meeting (virtual presentation).

Gwiazda, G., Bondhus, C., Kayton, K., Barth, H., & Patalano, A.L. (2022, November) Telling people about the left digit effect in number line estimation does not reduce the effect. Poster presented at the Psychonomic Society Annual Meeting (virtual presentation).

Kayton, K., Krueger, K., & Schumann, K. (2022, February) The rusty halo effect during conflict: How people view their transgressing romantic partners through a negative lens. Poster presented at the Society for Personality and Social Psychology Annual Convention (virtual presentation).

Bondhus, C., Gwiazda, G., Williams, K. Kayton, K., Barth, H., & Patalano, A.L. (2021, November) Trial-based predictors of the left digit effect in number line estimation. Poster presented at the Psychonomic Society Annual Meeting (virtual presentation).

Vaidya, L., Kayton, K., Barth, H., & Patalano, A.L. (2021, November) Test-retest reliability of the left digit effect in number line estimation. Poster presented at the Psychonomic Society Annual Meeting (virtual presentation).

Gwiazda, G., Bondhus, C., Kayton, K., Barth, H., Patalano, A.L. (2021, May) Telling people about the left digit effect in number line estimation does not reduce the effect. Poster presented at the Annual Meeting of the Association for Psychological Science (virtual presentation).

Williams, K., Kayton, K., Stenbaek, C., Green, J., Fischer, G., Barth, H., & Patalano, A.L. (2021, May) Competitive summary feedback improves number line estimation accuracy but does not reduce the left digit effect. Poster presented at the Annual Meeting of the Association for Psychological Science (virtual presentation).

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