COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY RESEARCH GROUP
Cognitive Psychology investigates psychological processes involved in knowledge acquisition and thinking. It does this by measuring performance on carefully designed experimental tasks. The way performance varies with task conditions provides valuable insights into the representations and processes that support cognition. Experimental studies conducted on normal adults build up a picture of how psychological processes (perception, memory, language, reasoning) operate, with important applications outside the laboratory. In cognitive neuropsychology, the focus is on the breakdown of cognitive processes that occurs as a result of localised brain injury. Developmental cognitive psychology explores how psychological processes develop and mature during childhood. But cognitive psychology is not restricted to these methods, and exciting opportunities are provided by new developments in neuroimaging and brain stimulation, which are now available in our new Centre for Brain Sciences.
The Cognitive Psychology Research Group actively pursues all these areas of Cognitive Psychology. We study memory, both long-term (Russo, Ward) and short-term (Hanley, Ward). How we recognise people, using face and voice information is an important area of work with clear practical applications (Hanley). Reading, spelling and speech production are studied in children, adults and neuropsychological patients (Barry, Hanley). We study the psychological processes involved in making judgments (Matthews) and attention (Cole). The influence of language on perceptual judgments is studied both developmentally and cross-culturally (Roberson). Other developmental studies include executive processes and knowledge of artefacts (Simpson). In addition, the group is active in a number of areas of applied research, including the effects of electromagnetic fields on cognition (Russo), cognitive bias in affective judgments (Standage), and the usability and design of transport maps (Roberts).
ACADEMIC STAFF
Chris Barry’s research currently focuses on three main topics: lexical selection in naming (by the study of semantic similarity effects in the picture-word interference task); spelling production (by recording latencies and durations of written responses); and age-of-acquisition effects in lexical processing.
Geoff Cole studies mechanisms concerned with visual cognition and attention.
Tom Foulsham studies visual cognition, with particular interests in eye movements and attention during the perception of scenes and movies.
Rachel Grenfell-Essam studies the effect of list length and output order on performance in immediate memory.
Rick Hanley studies the cognitive processes involved in reading, memory and speech production, in children, adults and patients with brain injury.
Will Matthews studies how people make judgments about basic perceptual dimensions such as duration, and more abstract, 'real-world' dimensions such as value.
Debi Roberson’s current work focuses on the interaction of language and perceptual categorization in children and adults. Recent cross-cultural research projects have highlighted behavioural differences on a range of cognitive and perceptual tasks between speakers of a variety of languages (Portuguese, Korean, Mayan, Italian, Japanese, Turkish, Farsi, Syrian, Himba and Berinmo).
Max Roberts studies transport map design and usability.
Tracy Robinson’s research is in the area of emotion, particularly the role of emotional perception and anxiety in attentional biases and the perception of emotion through nonverbal channels especially body posture.
Riccardo Russo work focuses on investigating the processes supporting recognition memory. He is also interested in the short and long term effects on cognitive functions and health parameters of exposure to electromagnetic fields generated by mobile phones.
Andrew Simpson is currently researching executive function in children and the development of artefact knowledge (objects made by people) and the learning processes that lead to this development.
Helen Standage’s research examines the causal influence that interpretation biases have on levels of social anxiety.
Geoff Ward’s current work focuses on serial position effects in immediate and long-term memory.
RESEARCH STAFF
PhD STUDENTS
Mark Atkinson is researching the role of action simulation and goal orienting in social attention tasks.
Grace Hyde is investigating children's rapid learning (fast mapping) about 'man-made' objects.
Steven Samuel is investigating the proposed effects of bilingualism on aspects of more general cognition.
Andreas Sotiropoulos is investigating Developmental Dyslexia in the Greek language.
Lydia Whitaker is investigating face and object processing of typically developing children and children with autistic spectrum disorder.
Dean Wybrow is investigating subtypes of developmental dyslexia.
