as at 29/08/2012
The University of Edinburgh
SCHOOL OF PHILOSOPHY, PSYCHOLOGY
& LANGUAGE SCIENCES
PSYCHOLOGY
FINAL HONOURS PROJECTS
2012-13
SUGGESTED TOPICS
Signing Up for Projects
This list is designed to help you match your interests with a potential supervisor. You do not need to
register your project formally until Week 3 of the Autumn semester 2012/13, but it is helpful to
many students to have this list now, to enable them to talk to potential supervisors and agree on a
project choice before the start of the next academic year. It is up to you to find a supervisor. Contact
details of each supervisor are given here to allow you to email or arrange meetings.
Students may work together in pairs on any project, and are encouraged to do so, but only in
exceptional circumstances should this number be exceeded. In recent years almost 40% of projects
have been based on the student's own idea rather than a staff member. However, as with literature
reviews, make sure you are choosing a topic which a staff member is willing to supervise. If the
supervisor is outwith the department, e.g. a clinical or educational psychologist, then you must have a
member of staff agreeing to act as internal supervisor when you register the project at the beginning of
the Autumn Term.
Dr Alexa Morcom
Psychology 4 Course Organiser
May 2012
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Alphabetical list of supervisors
Page
Dr Sharon Abrahams
3
Dr Elizabeth Austin
3
Professor Tim Bates
4
Professor Holly Branigan
5
Dr David Carmel
5
Dr Elena Gherri
7
Dr Karri Gillespie-Smith
8
Dr Wendy Johnson
10
Dr Peter Lamont
10
Dr Billy Lee
11
Professor Robert Logie
11
Dr Sarah MacPherson
14
Dr Andrea Martin
14
Dr Rob McIntosh
15
Dr Alexa Morcom
16
Dr Lars Penke
19
Professor Martin Pickering
19
Dr Richard Shillcock
20
Dr Patrick Sturt
22
Dr Caroline Watt
22
Dr Alex Weiss
23
Dr Sue Widdicombe
23
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DR SHARON ABRAHAMS
Email: s.abrahams@ed.ac.uk
Below are some suggested research topics for dissertation projects. I am willing to discuss other areas
within my discipline of clinical neuropsychology with a particular focus on executive and memory
functions and the effects of aging or neurodegenerative disease. The projects listed below investigate
the effect of normal aging. Anyone wishing to undertake a patient group project would need to access
this group (e.g. via voluntary centres) independently although I would be happy to supervise.
Speed of Processing and Dual Task in Aging
The study will compare speed of processing and working memory theories of aging. A minimum of
two groups of healthy adults will be tested an older and younger group. This study uses a newly
developed task which measures both speed of processing using a computerised visual discrimination
task combined with a dual task methodology of digit recall. The study aims to show differential effect
of aging on dual task and speed of processing.
Kaschel R. Logie RH. Kazen M. Della Sala S. Alzheimer's disease, but not ageing or depression,
affects dual-tasking. Journal of Neurology. 256(11):1860-8, 2009 Nov.
Sarah E. MacPherson, Sergio Della Sala, Robert H. Logie and Gordon K. Wilcock. Specific AD
impairment in concurrent performance of two memory tasks. Cortex (2007) Volume: 43, Issue: 7,
Pages: 858-865
The effect of ageing on verbal fluency
Verbal fluency is a standard measure used within clinical neuropsychology and is thought to be
sensitive to frontal lobe lesions. The test involves generating as many words as possible beginning
with a given letter. Adaptations of this task have been used in the investigation of neurodegenerative
disease (Abrahams et al. 2000) which often occurs in older adults. Dissecting verbal fluency we find
the test involves initiation, strategy formation, working memory, word retrieval. What is the
contribution of each of these components to verbal fluency and which are most vulnerable to the
effects of age? What is the effect of adding constraints onto the fluency task and how is this affected
by age?
Abrahams S, Leigh PN, Harvey A, Vythelingum GN, Grise D, Goldstein LH. Verbal fluency and
executive dysfunction in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). Neuropsychologia 2000;38(6):734-747.
Social Cognition and Executive Functions in Aging
This study will investigate the relationship between measures of social cognition and executive
functions in healthy aging. The study will use a new measure of social cognition (social scenarios test)
and other measures which assess the more fundamental processes of detection of eye gaze and
emotional facial expression. The latter two have been used to measure dysfunction in
neurodegenerative disease (Girardi et al. 2010). The study will determine what is the relationship
between these measures and whether changes in social cognition are found in parallel with changes in
executive functions.
Girardi, A., MacPherson, S. E, Abrahams, S. Deficits in Emotional and Social Cognition in
Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis Neuropsychology. Neuropsychology 2011, Vol. 25, No. 1, 53–65
DR ELIZABETH AUSTIN
Email: elizabeth.austin@ed.ac.uk
Validation of a new scale for assessing the use of strategies to change another person’s mood
This scale is currently being developed in a project which will be completed over the summer, so it
will be available for further research in September. The scale is designed in part to improve on the
emotional manipulation scale developed by Austin, Farrelly, Black, and Moore (2007) and to also
broaden the coverage of mood-changing strategies by including sub-scales relating to both mood-
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improving and mood-worsening strategies. Some preliminary data on the scale’s factor structure and
personality correlates will be available; additional data will be collected in one or more projects which
will further examine the associations of the use of mood-improving and mood-worsening strategies
(e.g. with emotion recognition performance, Theory of Mind, emotional intelligence, social network
size/quality), and validate the factor structure in a new sample.
Austin, E. J., Farrelly, D., Black, C., & Moore, H. (2007). Emotional intelligence, Machiavellianism
and emotional manipulation: Does EI have a dark side? Personality and Individual Differences, 43,
179-189.
Personality, emotional intelligence and decision-making
Both personality and emotional intelligence (EI) would be expected to be related to individual
differences in decision-making. For example, the personality traits linked to the behavioural approach
system (BAS) and behavioural inhibition (BIS) systems have been found to be related to choices made
in gambling tasks ( Kim & Lee, 2011). EI could impinge on decision-making by a number of
mechanisms, including better prediction of post-decision emotions (Dunn et al., 2007). In this project
the associations of personality and EI with decision-making will be examined using straightforward
choice tasks (e.g. choosing between two gambles with different risk levels and payoffs) which can be
implemented in an internet survey.
Dunn, E. W., Brackett, M. A., Ashton-James, C., Schneiderman, E., & Salovey, P. (2007). On
emotionally intelligent time travel: Individual differences in affective forecasting ability. Personality
and Social Psychology Bulletin, 33, 85-93.
Kim, D., & Lee, J. (2011). Effects of the BAS and BIS on decision-making in a gambling task.
Personality and Individual Differences, 50, 1131-1135.
Cross-situational personality variability
This project will examine how cross-situational variability in Five Factor Model personality trait
scores is related to other measures. There are a number of correlates of variability that could be
examined, including self-monitoring, Machiavellianism and impression management. The study
method will be similar to that described by Robinson, Wright, & Kendall (2010).
PROFESSOR TIM BATES
Email: tim.bates@ed.ac.uk
1. Raising Capability: Can we teach IQ, with lasting results for achievement?
In this project we will conduct research on whether training can raise IQ scores. Dweck and others
have suggested that simple manipulations of expectation can make lasting differences. This contrasts
with very expensive studies which appeared to fail in this task. Why?
Here’s a gentle if somewhat dated introduction to this idea.
http://www.stanfordalumni.org/news/magazine/2007/marapr/features/dweck.html
A quick look on Google will show many very recent references to this same topic. If you find the idea
engaging, get in touch.
2. Is self control hard work?
Since Aristotle and Galton, research has examined the role and origins of agency (e.g. Archontaki,
Lewis and Bates, 2012) and willpower (for instance Baumeister 2012, Job, Dweck, & Walton, 2010).
We will conduct experimental studies testing how internal resources enable our ability for self-control
and the exertion of agency.
You might enjoy reading:
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http://www.heckmanequation.org/heckman-equation-slideshow
3+. I am also open to other interesting topics, including aesthetics – a collaboration with the art
college or architecture school would be good – genetics: We have resources for a wide range of twin
studies.
PROFESSOR HOLLY BRANIGAN
Email: holly.branigan@ed.ac.uk
Repetition of structure in children's dialogue
I am interested in how children produce and understand language in dialogue. I would happy to
supervise any projects in this area, but here is one project of particular interest:
Children often imitate or repeat the language they hear around them, and this is thought to play an
important role in language acquisition. Recent work has shown that they sometimes repeat abstract
grammatical structure, as well as particular words or phrases. This tendency towards grammatical
repetition suggests that children have abstract representations of at least some aspects of grammar, in
contrast to some theories of language acquisition. We have developed a dialogue 'game' that allows us
to investigate children's grammatical repetition: an experimenter and a child take it in turns to describe
cards to each other in a 'snap' game. The project will use this task to study the circumstances under
which children repeat grammar.
Reference
Huttenlocher, J., Vasilyeva, M. & Shimpi, P. (2004). Syntactic priming in young children. Journal of
Memory and Language, 50, 182-195.
Do speakers cooperatively design their sentences for their listeners?
Speakers sometimes seem to ‘say the same thing’ in different ways depending on what they believe
about their listeners. In this project, we’ll examine whether such ‘audience design’ effects are
essentially cooperative: do speakers choose sentences that they believe their listeners will most easily
understand?
Reference
Brennan, S. E., & Clark, H. H. (1996). Conceptual pacts and lexical choice in conversation. Journal of
Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition, 22, pp.1482-1493.
DR DAVID CARMEL
Email: dave.carmel@ed.ac.uk
A. Perceptual learning:
Practicing any task leads to improvement. Interestingly, this is true even for basic perceptual tasks –
you can literally become better at seeing something if you train at it. Such improvements, known as
perceptual learning, are usually highly specific. They are limited to the trained stimulus features and
locations, and this is taken to indicate an early (retinotopic) cortical locus for the neural plasticity
underlying the observed learning (Carmel & Carrasco, 2008).
I will be running two projects related to perceptual learning:
1. Visual attention and perceptual learning: Directing visual attention to a particular spatial location
enhances perceptual processing at that location. Relatively little is known, however, about how
attention affects perceptual learning (Ahissar & Hochstein, 1993). In recent work, I have found that
training with attention causes not only greater perceptual learning than training without attention, but
also leads to a generalization effect: observers who trained with attention improved at untrained
locations as well, whereas those who trained without attention did not (this is surprising, because
attention was always directed to the trained locations).
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In this project we will attempt to figure out how attention enhances and generalizes perceptual
learning. We will test the hypothesis that attention enhances the same process that occurs without
attention, by training different groups of participants with and without attention, equating learning at
trained locations by varying the duration of training, and testing the amount of improvement each
group shows at unattended locations.
2. Unconscious perceptual learning: Is awareness of the trained stimuli necessary in order for
perceptual learning to occur? Some previous work (e.g., Seitz et al, 2009) has shown that visual
performance can improve even if the stimuli themselves are suppressed from awareness during
training. The mechanisms underlying such learning are poorly understood.
In this project we will use continuous flash suppression (Tsuchiya & Koch, 2006) to suppress visual
stimuli from awareness during training. We will also manipulate attention to specific spatial locations,
where (unbeknownst to our participants) trained visual stimuli may appear. We will examine the effect
of such training on perceptual learning, and whether attention modulates the amount of learning at
different locations.
References
Carmel, D., & Carrasco, M. (2008). Perceptual learning and dynamic changes in primary visual
cortex. Neuron, 57 (6), 799-801.
Ahissar M, Hochstein S. (1993). Attentional control of early perceptual learning. Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences USA, 90, 5718–5722.
Seitz, A.R., Kim, D., & Watanabe, T. (2009). Rewards evoke learning of unconsciously processed
visual stimuli in adult humans. Neuron, 61(5), 700-707.
Tsuchiya, N., and Koch, C. (2005). Continuous flash suppression reduces negative afterimages. Nat
Neurosci. 8, 1096-1101.
B. Perceptual asymmetries across the visual field: We normally assume that our vision is roughly
the same across the visual field, with visual acuity being best at fixation and decreasing gradually but
equally in all directions as the distance from fixation increases. This is not the case. Various
asymmetries have been found, including better visual performance at similar distances from fixation
on the horizontal than the vertical midline, and better performance in the lower than the upper half of
the vertical midline (Abrams et al, 2012). Performance has so far been found to be similar across intercardinal locations (i.e., on the diagonals).
Perceptual learning is the improvement in performing a perceptual task that results from practice. In
vision, perceptual learning is often highly specific to the trained locations in the visual field, indicating
an early (retinotopic) cortical locus of the plasticity underlying the learning. But the way the
specificity of perceptual learning is usually tested is problematic: observers are trained with stimuli
that appear in one location, and improve at doing the perceptual task; then, they are tested with stimuli
that appear at a different location, and are usually found to be worse. But to draw from this the
conclusion that perceptual learning was location-specific, you must assume the two locations were
similar to begin with.
The most widely used task in perceptual learning studies is Karni & Sagi’s (1991) texture
discrimination task (TDT). In almost all studies to date, a location in the top left of the visual field was
trained, and then a location in the bottom right was tested. In this project we will test whether
performance on the TDT is the same in different locations (spoiler: I’ve already done some work
showing that it isn’t, but we need to substantiate it with further experiments).
References
Abrams, J., Nizam, A., & Carrasco, M. (2012). Isoeccentric locations are not equivalent: The extent of
the vertical meridian asymmetry. Vision Research, 52(1), 70-78.
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Karni, A., & Sagi, D. (1991). Where practice makes perfect in texture discrimination: evidence for
primary visual cortex plasticity. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, 88(11),
4966-4970.
DR ELENA GHERRI
Email: Elena.Gherri@ed.ac.uk
Perceptual load in a tactile flanker task
In the tactile modality, the presence of tactile distractors can impair the detection and discrimination of
tactile targets presented simultaneously (e.g. Evans & Craig, 1992; Soto-Faraco, Ronald, & Spence,
2004). In these studies, tactile stimuli (both target and distractors) were presented to both hands
simultaneously. However, the mechanisms underlying within-hand and between-hand tactile selection
might be different, given that a different pattern of tactile ERP modulations is obtained when the
attentional selection is performed between the hands (c.f. Eimer & Forster, 2003a) or within the same
hand (c.f. Eimer & Forster, 2003b). Aim of the present project is to investigate whether an analogous
interference effect would emerge when target and distractors are presented to fingers of the same hand,
establishing a within-hand tactile equivalent of the flanker task (Eriksen & Eriksen, 1974). Crucially,
by manipulating the physical difference between the target and the distractors (high and low
perceptual load conditions) it will be possible to evaluate whether the interference of incompatible
distractors is reduced under high perceptual load condition, as postulated by the load theory of
selective attention (Lavie, Hirst, de Fockert & Viding, 2004).
References:
Eimer, M. & Forster, B., 2003b. The spatial distribution of attentional selectivity in touch: Evidence
from somatosensory ERP components Clinical Neurophysiology, 114, 1298-1306.
Eimer, M., & Forster, B., 2003a. Modulations of early somatosensory ERP components by transient
and sustained spatial attention. Experimental Brain Research, 151, 24-31.
Eriksen, B. A., & Eriksen, C. W., 1974. Effects of noise letters upon the identification of a target letter
in a nonsearch task. Perception & Psychophysics, 16, 143-149.
Evans & Craig, 1992 Evans, P. M., & Craig, J. C., 1992. Response competition: A major source of
interference in a tactile identification task. Perception & Psychophysics, 51, 199–206.
Lavie, N., Hirst, A., Fockert, Jan W. de & Viding, E., 2004. Load Theory of Selective Attention and
Cognitive Control. Journal of Experimental Psychology General, 133 (3), 339-354.
Soto-Faraco, S., Ronald, A., & Spence, C., 2004. Tactile selective attention and body posture:
Assessing the contribution of vision and proprioception. Perception & Psychophysics, 66, 1077–
1094.
Conflict monitoring across sensory modalities
The cognitive adaptation phenomenon can be observed in conflict tasks (Flanker task, Simon task,
Stroop task) when the sequential analysis of trials is carried out (that is when the compatibility of both
current and preceding trials are considered). Typically, the compatibility effect is reduced after the
consecutive presentation of two incompatible trials (e.g. Gratton, Coles, and Donchin, 1992).
According to the response conflict monitoring hypothesis (Botvinick, Braver, Barch, Carter, and
Cohen, 2001), the response conflict in the preceding trial elicit a stronger top-down control that
improve performance in subsequent trials. The aim of this project is to test whether the mechanisms
responsible for conflict monitoring operate in a supra-modal fashion, that is whether these conflictadaptation effects will still be observed when stimuli of different sensory modalities are presented on
successive trials.
References:
Botvinick, M.M., Braver, T.S., Barch, D.M., Carter, C.S. & Cohen, J.D., 2001. Conflict monitoring
and cognitive control. Psychological Review, 108, 624-652.
Gratton, G., Coles, M.G.H. & Donchin, E., 1992. Optimizing the use of information: Strategic control
of activation and responses. Journal of Experimental Psychology:General, 121, 480-506.
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Audiotactile cross-modal links in endogenous spatial attention
While there is now consistent evidence for the existence of crossmodal links in spatial attention
between vision and audition, and between vision and touch, links between audition and touch have
been scarcely investigated, and contrasting findings have emerged in the few studies conducted to date
(Lloyd et al., 2003; Eimer et al., 2001; 2002; Hötting et al. 2004). One reason why crossmodal
interactions in spatial attention between audition and touch might be weaker than interactions between
vision and other sensory modalities is that visual information may have a privileged role in mediating
spatial perception and multimodal sensory integration. The aim of this project is to find new evidence
for auditory-tactile crossmodal links, and to investigate the possible roles of visual information and
body posture for such links.
References:
Eimer M, Cockburn D, Smedley B, Driver J. Cross-modal links in endogenous spatial attention are
mediated by common external locations: Evidence from event-related brain potentials. Exp Brain
Res 2001;139:398-411.
Eimer M, Van Velzen J, Driver J. Cross-modal interactions between audition, touch, and vision in
endogenous spatial attention: ERP evidence on preparatory states and sensory modulations. J Cogn
Neurosci 2002;14:254-271.
Hötting K, Rösler F, Röder B. Crossmodal and intermodal attention modulates event-related brain potentials
to tactile and auditory stimuli. Exp Brain Res 2003;148:26–37.
Lloyd DM, Merat N, McGlone F, Spence C. Crossmodal links between audition and touch in covert
endogenous spatial attention. Percept Psychophys 2003;65:901–924.
The effects of gaze and covert attention on tactile processing
When we direct our gaze to one of our hands (even when vision of the hand is prevented), the
processing of tactile stimuli presented to the gazed hand is enhanced (Forster & Eimer, 2005). The
effect of gaze on tactile processing is very similar to the ERP modulations of tactile stimuli that are
usually found when participants covertly attend one of their hands while maintaining their gaze on a
central fixation point. Furthermore, responses to tactile stimuli presented to the gazed hand are faster
than those to the same tactile stimuli when presented to the other non gazed hand (c.f. Driver &
Grossenbacher, 1996; Honoré, Bourdeaud’hui & Sparrow, 1989). The aim of this project is to
systematically investigate the nature of this gaze effect and its links with covert tactile attention. Is the
effect of gaze on tactile processing independent from endogenous attention? What happens when gaze
and attention are simultaneously directed to different hands? Is the effect of gaze dependent on the
availability of visual information (what happens when the hand are not visible?).
References:
Driver, J., & Grossenbacher, P.J., 1996. Multimodal constraints on tactile selective attention. In T. Inui
& J.L. McClelland (Eds.) Attention and Performance XVI (pp 209-235). Cambridge MA: MIT
Press.
Forster, B., & Eimer, M., 2005. Vision and gaze direction modulate tactile processing in
somatosensory cortex: evidence from event-related brain potentials. Experimental Brain
Research, 165: 8-18.
Honoré, J., Bourdeaud’hui, M., & Sparrow, L., 1989. Reduction of cutaneous reaction time by
direction eyes towards the source of stimulation. Neuropsychologia, 27, 367-371.
DR KARRI GILLESPIE-SMITH
Email: kgillespie-smith@abdn.ac.uk
Exploring self-referential memory effects through ownership in children.
A robust feature of adult cognition is the ‘self-reference effect’ (SRE) in memory (Rogers, Kuiper, &
Kirker, 1977; Symons & Johnston, 1997). The SRE is the memory advantage for information encoded
in relation to the self over material encoded about others. The scarcity of evidence for self-reference
effects in early childhood may be due to the tendency for developmental researchers to focus on the
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standard adult SRE paradigm (see Symons & Johnson, 1997). The current inquiry will examine the
SRE in a child population (aged 3-4 years) by applying an ownership paradigm, (ie. encoding objects
in the context of self-ownership). This study will also explore if there are associations between theory
of mind abilities and the SRE in children.
References:
Symons, C. S., & Johnson, B. T. (1997). The self-reference effect in memory: A meta-analysis.
Psychological Bulletin, 121, 371-394.
Sui, J., & Zhu, Y. (2005). Five-year-olds can show the self-reference advantage. International Journal
of Behavioral Development, 29, 382-387.
Ross, J., Anderson, J.R., & Campbell, R.N. (2011). I remember me: Investigating mnemonic selfreference effects in preschool children. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child
Development, 76, 1-102.
Does familiarity impact on recognition of facial expression?
There is evidence within face perception literature, that processing emotion and identity of faces is
interdependent. For example, Kaufmann & Schweinberger (2004) showed participants familiar and
unfamiliar faces expressing different emotions and asked them to make a familiarity decision.
Familiar faces were recognised quicker when they showed a happy expression. However some
theorists propose that this interdependent relationship may not exist in both directions. This topic will
explore what happens to expression recognition when a face is familiar. Does face familiarity impact
on how quickly and accurately facial expressions are recognised?
References:
Calder A., J, & Young A., W. (2005). Understanding facial identity and facial expression recognition,
Nature Neuroscience Reviews, 6, (8), 641-653
Hole, G., & Bourne, V. (2010). Face processing. Oxford: Oxford University Press. (Chapter 1 & 3).
Does visual working memory impact on time spent averting gaze during tasks of high cognitive
load?
Faces present a lot of information, such as configural information, eye gaze, facial expressions,
identity etc. This information must carry a high cognitive load (Doherty-Sneddon and Phelps 2005).
When dealing with tasks that demand a high cognitive load, it has been proposed that attention to faces
must be avoided or reduced so that more cognitive resources can be used to process the task in hand.
This is known as the Cognitive Load Hypothesis of gaze aversion (Glenberg 1997). By averting their
gaze and not fixating on faces people may be able to use additional cognitive resources for the task in
hand and therefore improve task performance. However does this apply for all individuals?
Individuals with greater working memory abilities specifically visuo-spatial memory may be able to
process higher amounts of configural information, and therefore not need to avoid faces during
demanding tasks. This study will explore if individuals with high visual memory abilities show
reduced gaze aversion during demanding cognitive tasks.
References:
Doherty-Sneddon, G., Bruce, V., Bonner, L., Longbotham, S., and Doyle, C. (2002). Development of
gaze aversion as disengagement from visual information. Developmental Psychology, 38, 438-445.
Doherty-sneddon, G., and Phelps, F. G. (2005). Gaze aversion: A response to cognitive or social
difficulty. Memory and Cognition, 33, (4), 727-733.
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Glenberg, A. M., Schroeder, J. L., and Robertson, D. A. (1998). Averting the gaze disengages the
environment and facilitates remembering. Memory and Cognition, 26, (2), 651-658.
DR WENDY JOHNSON
Email: wjohnson@staffmail.ed.ac.uk
I am prepared to supervise Final Honours projects investigating individual differences in intelligence,
achievement, personality, and health developmental processes throughout the lifespan, particularly if
they involve consideration of genetic and environmental influences Interested students should contact
me to discuss project ideas and design. I can be especially helpful in suggesting methodology. For
conceptual background reading, see:
References
Johnson, W. (2007). Genetic and environmental influences on behavior: Capturing all the interplay.
Psychological Review, 114, 423-440.
DR PETER LAMONT
Email: peter.lamont@ed.ac.uk
Constructing Psychology
Since the emergence of the discipline, Psychology has been many different things, in terms of its
objects of study, and how it studies them. Throughout all this it has claimed to be scientific, though, as
the philosophy of science shows, precisely what this means is not clear. This project will use discourse
analysis of psychological texts to examine how Psychology has been constructed by psychologists, in
order to go beyond simplistic textbook answers to the question ‘What is Psychology?’
References:
Richards, G. (2010). Putting psychology in its place. London: Routledge.
Lamont, P. (2007). Discourse analysis as method in the history of psychology. History and
Philosophy of Psychology, 9(2), 34-44.
Belief maintenance: a discursive approach
Much research has been carried out into paranormal belief, most of which has depended upon
questionnaires as measures of belief, despite the fact that psychologists have identified a number of
problems with these. Meanwhile, little work has been done on how beliefs are maintained at a
discursive level: how are they expressed and defended in the real world? This project would use
discourse analysis of naturally occurring text in order to examine how beliefs are constructed and
warranted.
References:
Wooffitt, R. (1997). Telling tales of the unexpected: the organization of factual discourse. Hemel
Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf.
Lamont, P. (2007). Paranormal belief and the avowal of prior skepticism. Theory and Psychology,
17(5), 681-96.
Explaining the unexplained: scepticism about the paranormal
Psychologists have written a great deal about belief in the paranormal, yet very little has been written
about disbelief. This, despite the fact that disbelief is arguably a minority position, and is problematic
in a variety of ways. For example, people are often faced with evidence in favour of paranormal
phenomena, yet do not have an alternative explanation. This project would use discourse analysis of
naturally occurring text to identify how ‘scepticism’ towards the paranormal is justified.
References:
Potter, J. (1997). Representing reality: discourse, rhetoric and social construction. London: Sage
Publications
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Lamont, P., Coelho, C., & McKinlay, A. (2009). Explaining the unexplained: justifying disbelief in
the paranormal. Discourse Studies, 11(5), 543-559.
Debunking and the Psychology of belief
Since before the emergence of Psychology as a discipline, psychological scientists have been in the
business of debunking (what we now call) psychic phenomena. In the process, they have warranted the
need for a scientific Psychology, presented themselves as experts on such matters, and explained the
beliefs of others according to their own beliefs. This project would use discourse analysis of
psychological texts to examine what has been going on in the process of debunking.
References:
Coon, D. (1992). Testing the limits of sense and science: American experimental psychologists
combat Spiritualism, American Psychologist, 47, 2, 143-151.
Lamont, P. (2010). Debunking and the psychology of error: a historical analysis of psychological
matters. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 7(1), 34-44.
DR BILLY LEE
Email: b.lee@ed.ac.uk
Below are some examples of dissertation topics. I am happy to discuss other projects to explore
experience and behaviour using observational or phenomenological approaches. I am happy to discuss
areas that may be unusual, different or less established. Possible areas include experiences of
immigration, gender and sexuality, psychotherapy and counselling, and health, well-being and quality
of life.
1. Exploring Lived Experience
The aim of your project will be to explore and to understand a particular experience of your choosing.
You will use IPA as a qualitative method to illuminate the phenomenology of your chosen experience.
This method has been used to study health, sexuality, gender, identity etc. IPA is inductive, rather
than hypothesis driven. It avoids prior assumptions and tries to get at the experience as it is lived by
people and at the meanings they assign to their experiences.
Reid, K., Flowers, P., Larkin, M. (2005). "Exploring lived experience." The Psychologist 18 (1): 2023.
2. Nonverbal Communication in Interpersonal Relationships
This project investigates interpersonal communication via body posture, gesture, and facial expression.
You will make video recordings of pairs or groups of people, partners, friends or strangers, interacting
spontaneously or performing a task. The purpose of the project will be to devise ways of understanding
and categorizing the behaviour observed. This analysis may be used as a basis for illuminating
psychological processes such as attachment, emotional intelligence, or personality disorders.
Tucker, J. S. & Anders, S. L. (1998). Adult attachment style and nonverbal closeness in dating
couples. Journal of Nonverbal Behaviour, 22, 109-124.
PROFESSOR ROBERT LOGIE
Email: rlogie@staffmail.ed.ac.uk
1. Impact of the fMRI environment on cognitive function
There has been a dramatic growth in the use of brain imaging techniques, such as fMRI to study the
neuroanatomical correlates of human cognition. However, very little is known about how the physical
environment of the fMRI scanner affects the cognition that is being studied, and whether the way in
which participants perform cognitive tasks changes when they are tested within the scanner relative to
a standard laboratory. Using a full size simulator of an fMRI scanner, this project will investigate the
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impact on the cognitive strategies of participants of the fMRI environment relative to testing in a
standard behavioural laboratory setting.
References
Gutchess, M.S. & Park, D.C. (2006). fMRI environment can impair memory performance in young
and elderly adults. Brain Research, 1099, 133-140.
Henson, R. (2005). What can functional neuroimaging tell the experimental psychologist? Quarterly
Journal of Experimental Psychology, 58A, 193-233.
Logie, R.H., Venneri, A., Della Sala, S., Redpath, T. & Marshall, I. (2003). Brain activation and the
phonological loop: The impact of rehearsal. Brain and Cognition, 53, 293-296.
Logothetis, N. (2008). What we can do and what we cannot do with fMRI. Nature, 453, 12th June,
869-878.
Mazard, A., Mazoyer, B., Etard, O., Tzourio- Mazoyer, N., Kosslyn, S.M. & Mellet, E. (2002) Impact
of fMRI Acoustic Noise on the Functional Anatomy of Visual Mental Imagery. Journal of Cognitive
Neuroscience, 14 (2) p172-186
Raz, A, Lieber, B., Soliman, F., Buhle, J., Posner, J., Peterson, B.S. & Posner, M.I. (2005). Ecological
nuances in functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI): psychological stressors, posture, and
hydrostatics. NeuroImage 25, 1 – 7
Zeman, A., Della Sala, Torrens, L., Gountouna, E., McGonigle, D. & Logie, R.H. (2010). Loss of
imagery phenomenology with intact visual imagery performance. Neuropsychologia, 48, 145-155.
2. Visual imagery and visual perception. Do they overlap?
Visual perception involves identifying and recognising objects in the environment, allowing us to
interact successfully with the environment, but also to form mental images or representations of what
has been perceived. Mental images also can be formed from memories of previous experiences, with
no external stimulus input. There is a widely held view that the cognitive functions, and the neural
networks involved in visual perception, largely overlap with those used for imagery. An alternative
view is that mental imagery involves a cognitive function that deals with the products of perception,
but perception and imagery involve separate systems between which there is a flow of information.
This project will assess experimentally the extent to which the processes of visual perception and of
mental visual imagery might be more distinct than is generally assumed.
References
Kosslyn, S.M., (1994). Image and Brain. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.
Logie, R.H. & van der Meulen, M. (2009). Fragmenting and integrating visuo-spatial working
memory. In J.R. Brockmole (Ed.) Representing the Visual World in Memory, pp 1-32. Hove, UK:
Psychology Press.
Saito, S., Logie, R.H., Morita, A. & Law, A. (2008). Visual and phonological similarity effects in
verbal immediate serial recall: A test with kanji materials. Journal of Memory and Language, 59, 117.
Van der Meulen, M., Logie, R.H. & Della Sala, S. (2009). Selective interference with image retention
and generation: Evidence for the workspace model. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology,
62, 1568-1580. DOI: 10.1080/17470210802483800
3. Remembering to do things: Prospective Memory
Every memory function relies on remembering to carry out our intentions, whether it is to post a letter,
meet a friend, turn up for a tutorial or take medicine. This ability is known as Prospective Memory.
How we remember intentions at the appropriate time is not entirely understood, and it is known to
decrease with age with laboratory tasks but not when tested in the home environment. This project
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would examine prospective memory in real and laboratory simulated prospective memory tasks, and
could focus on healthy young adults, or compare different adult age groups.
References
Bailey, P.E, Henry, J.D., Rendell, P.G., Phillips, L.H., & Kliegel, M. (2010). Dismantling the “age–
prospective memory paradox”: The classic laboratory paradigm simulated in a naturalistic setting.
Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology.
Craik, F.I., & Bialystok, E. (2006). Planning and task management in older adults: cooking breakfast.
Memory & Cognition, 34, 1236-1249.
Law, A., Logie, R.H. & Pearson, D.G. (2006). The impact of secondary tasks on multitasking in a
virtual environment. Acta Psychologica, 122, 27-44.
Logie, R.H., Law, A.S., Trawley, S. & Nissan, J. (2010). Multitasking, working memory and
remembering intentions. Psychologica Belgica, 50, 309-326.
NB - This journal is not in the University Library. If students who are interested in this topic would
like a copy of this paper, then please contact Professor Logie.
Logie, R.H. & Maylor, E.A. (2009). An internet study of prospective memory across adulthood.
Psychology and Aging, 24, 767–774
4. Doing two, or three or more things at once
Most people can walk and talk at the same time, but would have problems trying to hold a
conversation while reading. One theoretical assumption (e.g. Barrouillet et al Cowan, 2005) is that we
have available a single, general purpose attention system that is of limited capacity. According to this
assumption, increasing the difficulty of a task should stretch this capacity to its limits and result in a
breakdown in performance. Adding a second task should have an even greater effect on task
performance. An alternative view (Baddeley & Logie, 1999; Logie & van der Meulen, 2009) is that
we have different capacities available, and so if two tasks each use different cognitive abilities, then
doing two tasks at once should be no more difficult than doing only one task at a time.
References
Baddeley, A.D. & Logie, R.H. (1999). Working memory: The multiple component model. In A.
Miyake & P. Shah (eds.) Models of Working Memory, pp28-61. New York: Cambridge University
Press.
Barrouillet, P., Bernardin, S. & Camos, V. (2004) Time constraints and resource sharing in adult’s
working memory spans. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 133(1), 83-100.
Barrouillet, P. & Camos, V. (2007) The time-based resource-sharing model of working memory. In N.
Osaka, R. H. Logie & M. D’Esposito (Eds) The cognitive neuroscience of working memory (pp 5980). New York: Oxford University Press Inc.
Cowan, N. (2005) Working memory capacity. Hove, East Sussex, UK: Psychology Press.
Logie, R.H., Cocchini, G., Della Sala, S. & Baddeley, A.D. (2004). Is there a specific executive
capacity for dual task co-ordination? Evidence from Alzheimer’s Disease. Neuropsychology, 18, 504513.
Logie, R.H., Della Sala, S., MacPherson, S. & Cooper, J. (2007). Dual task demands on encoding and
retrieval processes: Evidence from healthy adult ageing. Cortex, 43, 159-169.
Logie, R.H. & Duff, S.C. (2007). Separating processing from storage in working memory operation
span. In N. Osaka, R.H. Logie, & M. D’Esposito (Eds.) The cognitive neuroscience of working
memory. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, pp 119-135.
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DR SARAH MACPHERSON
Email: sarah.macpherson@ed.ac.uk
My research interests are frontal lobe functions such as memory, executive abilities and social
cognition and how they are affected by healthy adult ageing and brain damage. I am happy to discuss
the supervision of other potential projects related to my research, in addition to the dissertation
projects outlined below.
1. The effect of healthy adult ageing on multi-tasking
There are a number of reports in the literature of patients with frontal lobe damage who are impaired
in their ability to organise and structure goal-related behaviours. In everyday life, examples of such
situations are those involving “multi-tasking” such as planning a dinner party or going shopping.
However, despite the evidence that age effects are found on cognitive tasks sensitive to frontal lobe
dysfunction, little is known about the effect of healthy adult ageing on multi-tasking tasks tapping
real-world executive skills. This project will investigate the effects of age on a well-known test of
multitasking and more traditional tests of executive function sensitive to frontal lobe damage.
Burgess, P.W., Veitch, E., de Lacy Costello, A. & Shallice, T. (2000). The cognitive and
neuroanatomical correlates of multitasking. Neuropsychologia, 38, 848-863.
Garden, S.E., Phillips, L.H. & MacPherson, S.E. (2001). Midlife aging, open-ended planning, and
laboratory measures of executive function. Neuropsychology, 15, 472-482.
2. Social cognition in later life
In everyday social interactions, individuals must be able to respond to the mental states of others. This
ability to attribute beliefs and desires to others in order to predict and explain behaviour is referred to
as theory of mind. Recent studies have found conflicting findings as to whether there are age-related
effects on theory of mind abilities. Yet, the tasks adopted often do not resemble real world situations
as they are in the form of stories or cartoons rather than video clips. In this project, you will examine
the effects of healthy adult ageing on more ecologically valid theory of mind type tasks.
Slessor, G., Phillips, L., & Bull, R. (2007). Exploring the specificity of age related differences in
theory of mind tasks. Psychology and Aging, 22, 639-643.
Sullivan, S., & Ruffman, T. (2004). Social understanding: How does it fare with advancing years?
British Journal of Psychology, 95, 1-18.
3. Emotional processing and healthy adult ageing
The predominant finding in the emotion literature is that there is age-related decline in the ability to
recognise certain negative emotions. It is argued that these age effects are due to specific
neuropsychological change in the social brain. The ability to process emotions is thought to be critical
for communication with others and yet older adults do not appear to demonstrate problems in their
everyday social interactions. This project will investigate younger and older adults’ ability to
recognise emotions in more real-life situations.
Ruffman, T., Henry, J.D., Livingstone, V., & Phillips, L.H. (2008). A meta-analytic review of emotion
recognition and aging: implications for neuropsychological models of aging. Neuroscience and
Biobehavioral Reviews, 32, 863-881.
DR ANDREA MARTIN
Email: amarti12@staffmail.ed.ac.uk
I am interested in how memory processes and linguistic representations interact and make language
use in real time possible. I am especially interested in the comprehension of sentences. I would be
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happy to supervise any project related to sentence processing or to memory and language; here are two
projects to consider:
1. Different types of cues to linguistic memory representations
Often during language comprehension, speakers and listeners need to access recently processed
information in memory in order to understand the linguistic input that is coming into the system in the
current moment. What types of information or “cues” are used to retrieve the right information from
memory during sentence comprehension? This project will focus on the role of grammatical
agreement in forming long-distance linguistic dependencies.
Lewis, R.L., Vasishth, S., Van Dyke, J., 2006. Computational principles of working memory in
sentence comprehension. Trends Cognitive Sci. 10, 447–454.
Martin, A. E., Nieuwland, M. S., & Carreiras, M. (2012). Event-related brain potentials index cuebased retrieval interference during sentence comprehension. NeuroImage, 59, 1859-1869.
McElree, B., 2006. Accessing recent events. In: Ross, B.H. (Ed.), The Psychology of Learning and
Motivation, Vol. 46. Academic Press, San Diego.
2. Combining word-level and sentence-level information during reading
During silent reading, several factors are known to affect how long it takes for a word or phrase to be
read, an index of processing difficulty. However, how basic factors like lexical frequency and
contextual constraint combine during online processing, and what their relative order is in function
and time, is just beginning to be explored. This project will try to gain insight about the architecture of
the human language processing system and its interface with the acquired skill of reading.
Staub, A. (2011). Word recognition and syntactic attachment in reading: Evidence for a staged
architecture. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 140, 407-433.
Van Petten, C. & Kutas, M. (1990). Interactions between sentence context and word frequency in
event-related brain potentials. Memory & Cognition, 18, 380-393.
DR ROB McINTOSH
Email: r.d.mcintosh@ed.ac.uk
In addition to the following topics, I am happy to discuss students’ ideas for any projects related to
motor behaviour, visual attention, or any of the ongoing projects in the Visuomotor Lab
(www.psy.ed.ac.uk/people/rmcinto1/VMLprojects.html).
Attention and action
At any time, numerous potential actions may be available to us, but we cannot execute more than a
tiny fraction of these. Coherent action is thus inherently selective. When our actions are visually
guided, this means we must focus visual attention on the target object. This is directly analogous to the
visual attention that we give to objects prioritised for perceptual goals, such as object recognition. A
key question in contemporary cognitive science is whether the selection of visual information for
perception and for action are achieved by the same or by separable attention mechanisms. This project
will address this question using motion tracking and eye-tracking technologies.
Smith DT & Schenk T (2012). The Premotor theory of attention: time to move on? Neuropsychologia
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2012.01.025,
Cognition and action
Our moment-to-moment actions proceed mostly without much thought, but certain aspects seem to
require more cognitive effort. Creem & Proffitt (2001) showed that, while distracted by a difficult
mental task, people will do daft things like picking up spoons by their bowl-end rather than by their
handle. At the same time, the execution of those actions remained very skilful. This suggests that
deciding how to pick something up may take cognitive effort, but carrying out the action once the
decision has been made is more automatic. This project will extend this method to study the ‘endstate-comfort’ phenomenon, in which people choose actions that minimise postural awkwardness. We
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would predict that this kind of action selection, like tool grasping, should require cognitive
involvement, resulting in poor choices of grasp posture under dual-task conditions, but that the quality
of the grasp itself will not be affected. Other aspects of action selection and guidance could also be
investigated.
Creem SH, Proffitt DR (2001). Grasping Objects by Their Handles: A Necessary Interaction Between
Cognition and Action. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 27:
218-228.
Physical constraints on mental imagery
When we imagine moving, many of the same motor systems in our brains are active as when we make
real movements. One way to probe motor imagery is to ask people to make laterality (left or right)
judgements about pictures of hands and feet. People solve this task by imagining moving their own
limbs to match the picture. One source of evidence for this is that the speed of laterality judgement is
strongly influenced by how closely the person’s current posture matches that of the hand in the
picture. This project will follow up on recent student projects in the visuomotor lab, investigating in
more detail how people make laterality judgements about hands and/or feet.
Parsons L (1994). Temporal and Kinematic Properties of Motor Behavior Reflected in Mentally
Simulated Action. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception & Performance. 20: 709730.
Mirror-writing
Mirror-writing, the writing of letters or words in mirror-reversed form, can arise spontaneously after
brain damage, is common amongst children learning to write, and is intentionally practiced by some
rare individuals. This intriguing phenomenon has received relatively little neuropsychological
investigation. This project will investigate mirror-writing amongst children learning to write, or in
adults deliberately attempting to mirror-write. You can read more about the phenomenon in a
forthcoming review article, linked below:
McIntosh RD & Della Sala S (in press). Mirror writing: spontaneous, involuntary, and deliberate. The
Pssychologist.
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/20090414/McIntosh_Della_Sala_MW.pdf
DR ALEXA MORCOM
Email: alexa.morcom@ed.ac.uk
My main research interest is in memory: basic memory mechanisms, and how memory changes as we
age. For more details see my website:
http://www.ccns.sbms.mvm.ed.ac.uk/people/academic/morcom.html
I am happy to discuss the supervision of other potential projects related to my research, as well as
those outlined below. Student input into the project topic is encouraged.
In both areas of interest, projects are possible examining how memory changes in ageing, or
investigating the basic mechanisms of episodic memory in young adults. Ageing projects are more
challenging because of the involvement of two groups. Basic mechanisms can be pilots for ageing
studies, and are critical to build an understanding of the memory processes that may change in ageing.
Good combinations are for 2 study partners to work together on 1 basic mechanisms project and 1
ageing project, or 2 related ageing projects, sharing data collection.
Please come and see me if you are interested in doing a project with me.
Topic 1. Episodic memory and episodic memory in ageing
Conscious long-term memory for specific events is one of the abilities most affected by ageing. Older
adult’ episodic memory is characterised by problems remembering details, context, and associations
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between items (2-5). Events are less likely to be recollected, and a non-specific feeling of familiarity
often dominates (2). Importantly, older people are prone not only to failing to remember unique
events, but also to false memories, that is, mistakenly ‘remembering’ events that did not happen. We
are investigating this using tests of memory for similar-appearing objects, tests of memory for words
linked by meaning or by perceptual details, and tests of memory for unfamiliar faces.
General references
1. Eichenbaum H, Yonelinas AP, Ranganath C 2007. The medial temporal lobes and recognition
memory. Annu Rev Neurosci. 2007. 30:123–52.
2. Luo L, Craik FIM. 2008. Aging and memory: a cognitive approach. Can J Psychiatry. 53(6):34653.
Current themes include:
A. Ageing and false memory
Why do older adults mistake new items for old ones? Is it due to difficulties with cognitive control,
linked to frontal lobe damage? Or is it because of impairments in the encoding of detailed memories,
linked to hippocampal damage? Some research supports the control theory: older adults are more
prone to forming general or ‘gist-based’ memories, and may be more easily misled by semantic
information (2). But other research also suggests that in older adults, the hippocampus is less able to
‘pattern-separate’, leading to difficulties in encoding distinct memories of different events (3). Work is
ongoing investigating the contribution of these two factors and the critical role that meaning may play.
3.
4.
Koutstaal W. 2006. Flexible remembering. Psychon Bull Rev. 13(1):84-91.
Yassa MA, Lacy JW, Stark SM, Albert MS, Gallagher M, Stark CE. 2010. Pattern separation
deficits associated with increased hippocampal CA3 and dentate gyrus activity in nondemented
older adults. Hippocampus. [Epub ahead of print]
B. ‘Environmental support’ of older adults’ memory
I am also interested in how ‘environmental support’ for memory encoding can help older adults’
memory. Providing strategic support does not always reduce age-related impairments (2,5,6), but
providing pre-existing meaningful links may help (5,6). The potential for support for older adults’
memory has important practical implications, but also provides opportunities to evaluate the extent to
which older adults’ memory difficulties stem from problems with memory control. This project mainly
involves associative memory tasks and comparing young and older adults.
Castel, A. D. 2005. Memory for grocery prices in younger and older adults: the role of schematic
support. Psychol Aging. 20: 718-721.
6. Naveh-Benjamin M, Hussain Z, Guez J, Bar-On M. 2003. Adult age differences in episodic
memory: further support for an associative-deficit hypothesis. J Exp Psychol Learn Mem Cogn,
29(5), 826-837
5.
C. Retrieval search and strategy in ageing
A little studied aspect of episodic memory is the search process – how do people constrain memory
search when they are seeking particular information? Are such strategic processes impaired in ageing?
Some evidence suggests that older adults do not process items for meaning when they are trying to
remember items processed for meaning, whereas young people do – and this is helpful to memory (2).
The suggestion is that failure to engage a controlled search may explain the failure to recollect (7).
Basic mechanisms of this need exploring in young adults, too.
7.
Jacoby LL, Shimizu Y, Velanova K, Rhodes MG. 2005. Age differences in depth of retrieval:
Memory for foils. J Mem Lang. 52:493-504.
Topic 2. Procedural memory and procedural memory in ageing
Procedural learning and memory involves learning and expressing knowledge about regularities in the
environment without necessarily having explicit (declarative) knowledge of what is learned. Recent
neuroimaging studies have reawakened debate about whether these automatic aspects of learning
17
change in ageing, and posed new questions about whether they are really independent (e.g. 8). But
simple behavioural experiments can be very informative too.
A. Learning in an uncertain world
An alternative approach to assessing people’s procedural learning of a fixed ‘hidden’ sequence is a
more ‘lifelike’ probabilistic approach in which the dependencies of one event on another change over
time. fMRI data suggest that the hippocampus may be sensitive to variations in uncertainty about a
sequential ‘implicit’ pattern (8). A basic mechanisms project would extend (8) behaviourally to
determine how uncertainty is linked to procedural learning in young adults. An ageing project would
use the same paradigm to explore the novel question of how uncertainty affects learning in older adults
(see also 9). The task is a simple serial reaction time task. (For a student with good computational
skills, the simple Bayesian learning model in (8) can be applied).
Harrison LM, Duggins A, Friston KJ. 2006. Encoding uncertainty in the hippocampus. Neural
Netw.19(5):535-46.
B. Does it help to ‘try’ to learn?
Procedural learning is traditionally regarded as independent of declarative, including episodic,
memory. However, some studies suggest that different memory ‘systems’ may sometimes interact
and/or compete, particularly in older adults with reduced processing resources. The evidence so far is
conflicting (9,10).
8.
Howard DV, Howard JH Jr. 2001. When it does hurt to try: adult age differences in the effects of
instructions on implicit pattern learning. Psychon Bull Rev. 8:798-805.
10. Song S, Marks B, Howard JH, Howard DV. 2009. Evidence for parallel explicit and implicit
sequence learning systems in older adults. Behav Brain Res. 196:328-322.
9.
Topic 3. Scene Semantics in Visual Long Term Memory
This project is supervised by Dr. Morcom but is part of a collaboration with Dr. George Malcolm at
George Washington University, USA.
Humans have a remarkable ability to remember scene images stored in visual long-term memory
(VLTM), even when such images were only presented for a brief amount of time. Standing (12) found
that after being presented with 10,000 scene images, participants recalled around ~80% correctly. One
of the keys to this high performance may be how scenes are processed as members of categories.
Konkle et al. (11) found evidence that VLTM representations go beyond simply remembering the
category a scene belonged to (e.g., an image of a city). Scenes can be labelled at different levels of
category specificity, such as the superordinate (e.g., outdoors), basic (city) and subordinate (Paris)
levels (12). The proposed study seeks to further explore the extent of the semantic detail stored in
VLTM, and how this impacts on episodic (recognition) memory. Depending on interest, ageing effects
may be investigated – this ties in with work on false memory (topic 1A).
11. Konkle T, Brady TF, Alvarez GA, Oliva A. 2011. Scene memory is more detailed than you think:
12.
13.
the role of categories in visual long-term memory. Psychol Science. 21: 1551-1556.
Standing L. 1973. Learning 10,000 pictures. Q J Exp Psychol. 25, 207–222.
Tversky B, Hemenway K. 1983. Categories of environmental scenes. Cognit Psychol. 15, 121–
149.
A note on neuroimaging
Because of the complexity of the procedures and data analysis involved, I do not usually supervise
dissertation projects that use neuroimaging methods (fMRI/ ERPs). However, I will consider it on a
case by case basis depending on funding and the student’s expertise (an early start would be essential,
as well as previous experience and/or a particular aptitude for data processing and analysis, and
excellent computer skills).
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DR LARS PENKE
Email: lars.penke@ed.ac.uk
Research interests
Evolutionary significance of individual differences, especially of general intelligence, personality
traits, and attractiveness; genetics; cognitive aging, especially in relation to the brain’s white matter
integrity; evolutionary psychology of human mate choice and mating behaviour.
Projects
Anthropometric correlates of interpersonal personality traits
It has been hypothesised that one source of individual differences in interpersonal personality traits
(like extraversion, agreeableness, narcissism, shyness or social dominance) is getting used to how
other people tend to reaction towards oneself. So someone might have a tendency to act more
aggressive because others are usually intimidated by his strength, or more outgoing because others
tend to react positively to her beauty. If personality traits are really influenced by these physical
attributes (as opposed to related behaviours), then we should be able to find correlations between
anthropometric measures of body and face shape that relate to attractiveness, muscularity etc. The
Body Lab allows us to quickly capture the body and face of participants with 3D scanners in great
detail. Anthropometric measures derived from these scanners can be related to measures of
personality. I can supervise students who want to work with me on projects in any of these or related
domains. Due to the nature of the data confidence in statistical skills is an advantage.
References:
Brown,W. M., Price, M. E., Kang, J., Pound, N., Zhao, Y., & Yu, H. (2008). Fluctuating asymmetry
and preferences for sex-typical bodily characteristics. Proceedings of the National Academy of
Sciences USA, 105, 12938–12943.
Lukaszewski, A. W., & Roney, J. R. (2011). The origins of extraversion: Joint effects of facultative
calibration and genetic polymorphism. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 37, 409–421.
Price, M., Dunn, J., Hopkins, S., & Kang, J. (2012). Anthropometric correlates of human anger.
Evolution and Human Behaviour, 33, 174-181.
Stirrat, M., & Perrett, D. I. (2010). Valid facial cues to cooperation and trust: Male facial width and
trustworthiness. Psychological Science, 21, 349-354.
Sell, A., Tooby, J., & Cosmides, L. (2009). Formidability and the logic of human anger. Proceedings
of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 106, 15073-15078.
PROFESSOR MARTIN PICKERING
Email: martin.pickering@ed.ac.uk
1. Cross-linguistic structural priming and bilingualism
Bilinguals might store their two languages separately. However, they might find it economical to
share information where possible. Recent structural priming studies suggest that some grammatical
information can be shared, at least when the two languages form a particular grammatical structure in
a similar way (Hartsuiker et al., 2004). In this project, you would investigate this issue by testing
structural priming between any pair of languages (with one normally being English). At least one
student should have good knowledge of the languages to be studied, and you would also need access
to 20-30 participants.
Reference
Hartsuiker, R. J., Pickering, M. J., & Veltkamp, E. (2004). Is syntax separate or shared between
languages? Cross-linguistic syntactic priming in Spanish/English bilinguals. Psychological Science,
15, 409-414.
2. Exploring the shared Stroop effect
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When two people "share" certain tasks, their performance interferes with each other, in a way
suggesting that they co-represent the task (Sebanz et al., 2003). Our pilot studies have shown similar
effects in language, using a shared Stroop task. Two participants sit side-by-side and respond to
different colours, and we show that their assumptions about each other's potential responses affects
their own responses.
This project would apply this technique to explore the mechanisms underlying the social nature of
language use.
References
Sebanz, N., Knoblich, G., & Prinz, W. (2003). Representing others’ actions: Just like one’s own?
Cognition, 88, B11–B21.
3. Language as joint action
To be successful at a joint activity (such as playing a duet or using a two-handed saw), both
participants need to coordinate their behaviours.
Dialogue is a form of joint activity using language and interlocutors are remarkably good at it. We
would investigate joint language use by "splitting" tasks between two participants. For example, one
participant might describe the first part of an event (e.g., "the boy") and the other participant might
complete it (e.g., "is kicking the ball"). By comparing joint and individual language use, we expect to
determine the extent to which speakers represent what they think their partner is likely to say, and thus
create a kind of "shared reality" for language use. For some background see:
Garrod, S., & Pickering, M.J. (2004). Why is conversation so easy?
Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 8, 8-11.
4. Social manipulations of audience design
Speakers clearly produce their utterances with particular addressees in mind, for example using
simpler language when addressing non-experts than experts in a particular domain (Isaacs & Clark,
1987). But can they be non-consciously primed to be more or less helpful? In this study we apply
techniques from social psychology to this aspect of the psychology of language.
References
Isaacs, E. A., & Clark, H. H. (1987). References in conversations between experts and novices.
Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 116, 26-37.
DR RICHARD SHILLCOCK
Email: r.shillcock@ed.ac.uk
www: http://tinyurl.com/r-shillcock
Projects in the area of reading, vision, cognitive modelling, language representation and processing.
Students interested in carrying out a project in these areas should contact me to discuss the
possibilities. Specific possibilities are:
One or two eyes in reading
We normally read with both eyes open, although there are all sorts of “noisy” oculomotor behaviours
in reading. Psychologists typically undervalue such real-world aspects of reading in favour of coming
up with “simple” theories and models of reading based on idealized views of the processing that
happens. We will run a visual lexical decision experiment using a set of six-letter words whose
processing we have studied before (using a different technique, but it means we do know some of the
important dimensions of their processing). There will be two conditions used – one eye or both eyes
open. We will be interested in how much the additional eye improves the speed and accuracy of visual
lexical decision, and how that improvement interacts with what we know about the location of
important information within the words.
The student will learn to run a visual lexical decision experiment in which response times are
collected, as well as other simple data (sex, handedness, eye preference) from 20 native-English
speaking participants. The student will collaborate in analyzing the data to reveal the effects on word
recognition. The student will explore the implications of the data for current models of word
recognition.
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Useful reading:
Obregón, M. & Shillcock, R.C. (being revised). Foveational complexity in single word identification:
Contralateral pathways are advantaged over ipsilateral pathways. Neurologia. Available on request.
Computational modelling with TRACE
The student will learn how to run the TRACE model of auditory word recognition, presenting it with
idealized input (textual representations of auditory words) and recording the output from the model.
TRACE is one of the most influential cognitive models in speech perception research and is still being
actively researched.
No computational background or programming skills are necessary, but if a student has such skills,
then it will be possible to use them in testing rather different hypotheses about the model’s behaviour.
The project will involve (a) coming up to speed in a qualitative understanding of how TRACE works
(see the reading, below); (b) learning to run a version of TRACE on the student’s own laptop and/or
on a Psychology computer; (c) understanding some of the literature on how TRACE has been used to
theorize about auditory word recognition and segmentation; (d) collaborating on devising some
hypotheses to test using TRACE; (e) constructing stimulus sets (i.e. list of words or nonwords that
TRACE can “recognize”) that address those hypotheses; (f) running the simulations, recording and
presenting the data. (There will be a premium on the careful and consistent graphical representation of
the data.). Discussing the implications for spoken word recognition.
It may be possible to use a new development of TRACE being worked on by RCS currently. Our
default will be the standard version. The goal will be to understand more about how words are
segmented from speech and identified, and to express this in computational terms.
Useful reading:
McClelland, J., & Elman, J. (1986a).The trace model of speech perception. Cognitive Psychology,
18(1), 1–86.
Or there is a book chapter in:
McClelland, J.L. & Rumelhart, D.E. (1988). Explorations in Parallel Distributed Processing. MIT
Press (1988).
Understanding spoken word recognition from a new perspective
This project would suit a student with an interest in spoken word recognition and how we theorize
about it.
The goal is to cash out a novel conceptual approach to theorizing about language use. An existing
transcription of real speech (probably The London-Lund Corpus) will be used as data. This is real
speech has been transcribed into words; an idealized phonological representation has been produced
from it.
The student will use these data, existing on a computer, along with an existing computerized
pronunciation dictionary, to explore the structure of spoken English.
In brief, the goal is to explore an alternative concept of “universal” – something that unifies many
things. Instead of exclusively using abstract universals like “noun”, “prefix”, “syllable”, we will look
at the implications of also using a concrete universal. The sound associated with the vowel schwa
constitutes some 10% of normal English speech (e.g at the end of “panda”). We will assess
quantitatively how it connects to every other type of representation in spoken English (phonological,
morphological, syllabic, prosodic, lexical, syntactic, and possibly semantic). This will involve using
the computerized corpus of speech and a small range of Unix tools to count things about the
occurrence of schwa. The goal of the project is to end up with a new view of the structure of spoken
English and how it may be approached by the developing child.
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Useful reading:
Shillcock, R.C. (submitted). The schwa sound, materialist abstraction, the concrete universal, and the
study of language use. (Available on request)
DR PATRICK STURT
Email: patrick.sturt@ed.ac.uk
In addition to the project proposals below, I am happy to supervise any other projects in the area of
language comprehension, as long as I agree that the project is feasible.
The cognition of structure in language and other domains of cognition (3 projects)
Much of the information that we process in everyday life has an underlying abstract structure, in
which a larger object (for example, a sentence, a mathematical expression, a musical phrase) can be
made up of smaller parts, which may themselves be composed of smaller parts, etc. Recent work
using a priming methodology has investigated the representation of structure in mathematics and
language. This work shows that when people solve an equation with a particular structure, they
subsequently show an increased likelihood of producing a sentence that has a similar structure
(Scheepers et al, 2011). This suggests that the structures of mathematical and linguistic expressions
have a common mental representation at some level. I would be happy to supervise up to three
projects that would look into relations between linguistic cognition and other areas. Possible topics
include looking at whether linguistic/mathematical priming is bi-directional (e.g. whether
understanding a sentence with a particular structure can subsequently influence the way a
mathematical expression is processed), or using eye-tracking to look for commonalities in the way
mathematical and linguistic expressions are processed in real time. It is also possible to look at
musical cognition and its relation to language (knowledge of musical theory would be useful in this
case). Students are encouraged to discuss possible projects with me.
Reference:
Scheepers, C., Sturt, P., Martin, C., Myachykov, A., Teevan, K., and Viskupova, I. (2011). Structural
priming across cognitive domains: From simple arithmetic to relative clause attachment.
Psychological Science, 22:1319–1326.
The time-course of dependency formation during language comprehension (1 project)
Research on human syntactic processing has typically focused on rather simple dependencies such as
verb-argument relations. However, linguistic theory shows that natural language syntax involves a
wide range of different types of dependency, most of which have received very little attention from the
processing point of view. This study will involve using reading time measures to study the time-course
with which dependencies such as control, raising, binding, or unbounded dependencies are established.
The project would be particularly suitable for a student who has done linguistics as an outside subject.
Reference:
Sturt, P. (2003). The time-course of the application of binding constraints in reference resolution
Journal of Memory and Language 48, 542-562
DR CAROLINE WATT
Email: caroline.watt@ed.ac.uk
I will be supervising up to 4 students on two projects addressing the psychology of precognitive dream
experiences. It has been proposed that some 'paranormal' experiences may actually arise through the
processing of implicit information (Crawley, French & Yesson, 2002). The two projects will correlate
belief & experience of precognitive dreams with performance on implicit awareness/learning tasks,
and with associated psychological variables (e.g., transliminality and boundary thinness).
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Project 1 will use the ‘flicker paradigm’ (Rensink, 2004), in which alternating versions of original and
slightly changed pictures will be shown in rapid succession. The participants’ task is to press a button
to indicate when they can sense that something about the picture has changed, and to press the button
again when they can identify what it is that has changed.
Project 2 will use an implicit learning task, in which participants will be presented with a sequence
(e.g., of playing cards) that is associated with an outcome (e.g., reward or penalty). Through
experience they may learn the 'rule' that links the sequence with the outcome, and we will measure
their performance at this task.
Main Hypothesis: those who believe they experience precognitive dreams will be more able to sense
the change in the pictorial stimuli, and will be quicker to learn the implicit rule, compared to those
who do not believe that they experience precognitive dreams.
References:
Crawley, SE, French, C. C., & Yesson, S. A. (2002). Evidence for transliminality from a subliminal
card guessing task. Perception, 31, 887-892.
Rawlings, D. (2001). An exploratory factor analysis of Hartmann's Boundary Questionnaire and an
empirically-derived short version. Imagination, Cognition and Personality, 21, 131-144.
Rensink, D. A. (2004). Visual sensing without seeing. Psychological Science, 15, 27-32.
Lange, R., Thalbourne, M. A., Houran, J., & Storm, L. (2000). The Revised Transliminality Scale:
Reliability and validity data from a Rasch top-down purification procedure. Consciousness and
Cognition, 9, 591-617.
DR ALEXANDER WEISS
Email: alex.weiss@ed.ac.uk
Students choosing me as their dissertation supervisor will be required to devise their own dissertation
project. I am willing to supervise feasible dissertations that focus on topics such as human or
nonhuman animal personality, animal behaviour, evolutionary psychology, health psychology, and
aging. Please see me before you decide to select me as it is important that we discuss the potential
feasibility of a project or any pitfalls.
DR SUE WIDDICOMBE
Email: s.widdicombe@ed.ac.uk
1. Meanings of Debt: a discursive psychological study
Student loans, economic recession, low interest rates, the availability of credit have all impacted on
individual debt. Several studies show that being in debt has effects on the choice of specialism and
emigration decisions among junior doctors (Moore, Gale, Dew & Simmers, 2006) and on mental and
physical health (Jessop, Herberts & Solomon, 2005), although relations between debt, academic
performance and mental health are complex (Ross, Cleland & MacLeod, 2006). However, attitudes
towards and perceptions of debt vary, for example, according to materialism (Watson, 2003), family
and school influence (Perna, 2008). There is some indication in the literature that how one perceives,
accounts for, and understands debt matters (Sussman & Shafir, 2012). But most studies are
correlational, and take no account of the likely variability in constructions of what it means to be in
debt and accounts of debt. This interview-based study will address this absence. It will conclude by
examining the implications of possible variability for the literature.
References:
Ross, S., Cleland, J. & MacLeod, MJ (2006). Stress, debt and undergraduate medical student
performance, Medical Education, 40(6), 584-589.
Jessop, D.C., Herberts, C., & Solomon, L. (2005). The impact of financial
circumstances on student health, The British Journal of Health Psychology, 10, 421-439.
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Sussman, AB & Shafir, E. (2012) On assets and debt in the psychology of perceived wealth,
Psychological Science, 23(1), 101-108.
For an example of how a discursive analysis may allow insight into concept such as debt (or, here,
religiosity), see
Widdicombe, S. (2011). ‘I am a Believer but not a Conformist’: Negotiating Claims to being Religious
among Syrian Christians and Muslims, Journal of Community and Applied Social Psychology,
21(6), 468–483.
2. Community in Practice: becoming a member in an online support group
Stommel and Koole examined an online support group on eating disorders, focusing on how new
members are accepted or not accepted into the forum community, how this is achieved through their
interaction with established members, and how membership norms are negotiated. This project will
extend their (2010) work on online support groups, by using discursive psychology and membership
categorisation analysis to examine a different online support group in which identity and becoming a
member may be relevant. It will discuss the implications of this approach for social psychological
studies of group membership and categorisation.
References:
Stommel, W. & Koole, T. (2010). The online support group as a community: a micro-analysis of the
interaction with a new member, Discourse Studies 12, 357-378.
See also
Smithson, J., Sharkey, SJ, Jones, R., Ford, T., et al. (2011). Membershipand boundary maintenance in
an online self-harm forum. Qualitative Health Research, 21(11), 1567-1575.
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