Professor Jacoby conducts research that focuses on the distinction between consciously-controlled and automatic processes. The distinction is useful for better understanding age-related differences in memory performance, and for improved diagnosis and treatment of memory deficits.
Other research extends the conscious/automatic distinction to issues in the domain of social psychology and seeks to identify brain-based differences for the types of processes. Interest in subjective experience has led to investigations of memory illusions (e.g., why memory can make a room seem less noisy).