Applying for a PhD
We offer a range of PhD studentships funded by research councils or charities. General information about these can be found under ‘Funding opportunities’.
To apply to study for a PhD at the Department of Psychology, please complete ALL the steps outlined below. To be considered for a studentship, your application will have to reach us by the deadlines advertised under step 3 and 4.
Step 1
Find a Supervisor
To begin the process, you will need to find a PhD supervisor whose research interests align with your own. You will need to contact them to discuss your application and the development of your research proposal. To help with this process, we advertise below ‘project ideas’ staff have proposed as starting points for the development of a research proposal. The project ideas are organised by research community (although many fall into more than one research community). Please read the advertised project ideas and additional information and contact the main supervisor to discuss the development of your research proposal. If you have an idea for a project that is not listed here, but which falls within the research area of a member of our staff, most staff are happy to be contacted about that. Just send them an email outlining your idea. You can find out about our staff's research interests by visiting our People pages.
Please contact your proposed supervisor as early as possible as developing your research proposal will take time.
As a department, we particularly encourage applications to work with early career staff. This year these include: Dr Amy Atkinson, Dr Jaime Benjamin, Dr Mark Hurlstone, Dr David Neequaye, Dr Heather Shaw, Dr Lydia Speyer, Dr Hannah Stewart, and Dr L-J Stokes. Applications to work with these members of staff are weighted preferentially at the short-listing stage for the EPSRC and the Faculty studentships.
Step 2
Apply to Lancaster
Apply to Lancaster University through the Lancaster University Admissions Portal. Please complete this step at least 2 weeks before the submission deadline mentioned under steps 3 and 4.
- In case of a 1+3 application, please apply for a PhD only at this stage. Don’t worry about the start date of the PhD at this point, this can be easily amended once the application is in the system.
Step 3
Apply to North West Social Science Doctoral Training Partnership (NWSSDTP)
If you wish to be considered for NWSSDTP funding, you need to apply to the NWSSDTP in addition to completing steps 2 and 4. Please follow the instructions on the NWSSDTP website and submit your application to them by 5 pm on Monday 26 February 2024.
Step 4
Apply to the Department of Psychology
Apply to the Department of Psychology by filling out our form. You will be asked to answer a few questions about your application and to upload a single PDF file that contains all the documents you have submitted under Step 2 and Step 3 (if applicable). If you wish to be considered for an NWSSDTP, EPSRC or Faculty studentship, please complete this step by 5 pm on Monday 26 February 2024.
What happens after you have submitted your application?
We will work with Lancaster University Admissions and with the NWSSDTP to process your application. After the closing date, we will consider all applications and invite shortlisted candidates for an interview. Interviews will usually be held via Teams. The timescale for this will vary but is in the region of 4 weeks following the application deadline.
If you have any questions about your application, please contact the postgraduate coordinators by emailing postgraduate.psychology@lancaster.ac.uk.
Current PhD Opportunities - Cognitive Psychology
Cognitive PhDs Accordion
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Optimising the environment to reduce working memory demands in children
Project details
Supervisor: Dr Amy Atkinson
Research community: Cognitive; Developmental
Contact: amy.atkinson@lancaster.ac.uk
Relevant funding opportunities: Faculty Studentship, NWSSDTP
Project outline
Working memory refers to an individual’s ability to store and process a limited amount of information for a brief period of time (e.g. seconds). It is considered crucial for many everyday activities, including following instructions, reading comprehension and mental arithmetic. Working memory has also been closely linked to a range of important outcomes in childhood and adolescence, including academic achievement. As such, a number of studies have investigated whether working memory capacity can be increased through working memory training. Unfortunately, although individuals do generally perform better at the task they were trained on, this rarely transfers to real-world outcomes, such as academic achievement. As such, there is now a focus on identifying ways in which classroom activities could be structured to reduce demands on working memory. For example, could teachers reduce working memory demands by supplementing information with gestures? Can children use their limited working memory abilities to prioritise particularly task-relevant information? Research has begun to explore these possibilities, but many outstanding questions remain. For example, which approaches work best, and do they work as effectively for different types of information? There would also be opportunity to explore whether approaches work effectively across age groups.
Relevant papers
Atkinson, A. L., Waterman, A. H., & Allen, R. J. (2019). Can children prioritize more valuable information in working memory? An exploration into the effects of motivation and memory load. Developmental Psychology, 55(5), 967.
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Learning and visual processing in immersive virtual reality scenes
Project details
Supervisor: Dr Tom Beesley
Research community: Cognitive
Contact: t.beesley@lancaster.ac.uk
Relevant funding opportunities: Faculty Studentship, NWSSDTP
Project outline
How do we learn about the visual world around us? Many different fields within cognitive psychology have approached this from different angles. For example, by looking at how people learn about repetition in visual search, or by examining foraging for resources, or navigation to a goal. This project will attempt to bring together work on these different forms of behaviour to try and find common cognitive mechanisms (learning, memory, attention). The work will use virtual reality to present different environmental contexts to people. One possibility is to explore the recording of body movements through the environment.
Relevant papers
The following is earlier work in a specific domain that inspired this idea: Beesley, T., Yun Tou, Y., & Walsh, J. (2022). Examining the role of depth information in contextual cueing using a virtual reality visual search task. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 48(12), 1313–1324.
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Uncertainty and Learning
Project details
Supervisor: Dr Tom Beesley
Research community: Cognitive
Contact: t.beesley@lancaster.ac.uk
Relevant funding opportunities: Faculty Studentship, NWSSDTP
Project outline
A key challenge for theories of human learning is to explain how uncertainty in the environment affects cognitive processing. Recent work in our lab has shown that uncertainty increases attention to stimuli, but we do not know how this affects learning and memory processes. This project would continue this work to develop a greater understanding of how uncertainty affects cognition. Here are some current questions we are working on:
- Does uncertainty improve memory representation for stimuli?
- Does uncertainty lead you to explore stimuli, or new contingencies, in meaningful ways?
- Does uncertainty make you more risk-averse for future learning/decisionsRelevant papers
Easdale, L. C., Le Pelley, M. E., & Beesley, T. (2019). The onset of uncertainty facilitates the learning of new associations by increasing attention to cues. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 72(2), 193–208.
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Effects of natural landscape exposure on aesthetic emotions and pro-environmental attitudes
Project details
Supervisor: Dr Francesca Citron, Dr Leyla De Amicis (University of Glasgow)
Research community: Cognitive; Social
Contact: f.citron@lancaster.ac.uk
Relevant funding opportunities: Faculty Studentship, NWSSDTP
Project outline
Public climate change awareness has dramatically increased in recent years, but most individuals still find it difficult to behave pro-environmentally when this affects their lifestyles and cultural norms (Fraj-Andrés et al., 2022). A growing number of people experience various negative emotions in response to climate change (see review by Cianconi et al., 2023) and recent research has explored how negative and positive emotions can predict climate change actions (Brosch, 2021; Davidson & Kecinski, 2022). Initial findings suggest that positive emotions seem to play a stronger role in promoting pro-environmental behaviour than negative emotions (Harth, 2021; Schneider, Zaval, Markowitz, 2021). Furthermore, positive human-nature connectedness emotions, i.e., ‘awe’, typically elicited by sublime natural environments, have been shown to affect pro-environmental behaviour (Petersen et al., 2023; Chirico et al, 2023).
Objectives. In this project will investigate:
1) Whether beautiful vs. sublime natural environment elicit different aesthetic emotions and appraisals (e.g., human-nature connectedness vs. other emotions)
2) Whether different elicited emotions lead to specific pro-environmental actions
3) Whether individual differences moderate the effects of natural environment on emotions and on pro-environmental actions, with a particular focus on cultural differences
4) Furthermore, whether the presence of non-human species in the presented natural environments make a difference to the emotions and pro-environmental actions
Methodology. Initial qualitative data obtained through individual interviews will provide precious information on participants’ experiences, which will subsequently guide the preparation and design of lab experiments. Cultural differences will be addressed by additionally targeting participants from a non-British culture.Relevant papers
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Effects of language and culture on emotional distance from one’s second language
Project details
Supervisor: Dr Francesca Citron
Research community: Cognitive; Neuroscience
Contact: f.citron@lancaster.ac.uk
Relevant funding opportunities: Faculty Studentship, NWSSDTP
Project outline
Multilinguals, i.e., people who speak more than one language fluently in their daily life, typically experience more emotional distance from their second or non-dominant language (see review by Pavlenko, 2012). Many factors can drive this difference, for example how early in life the second language was acquired, personal identification with one or the other language more strongly, proficiency in the second language, but also the specific culture of the multilingual speaker (e.g., Hsu et al., 2015; Kroll et al., 2015).
In this project we will look at affective and cognitive responses to the native (L1) versus second language (L2), by specifically manipulating the content of texts or spoken discourse and make it relevant to one’s native culture or not. Through a series of psycholinguistic and neurolinguistic experiments we will measure emotional engagement in response to language, and tease apart effects due to L1, proficiency or immersion in the L2, compared to effects due to cultural relevance. Even though texts and discourse are mentioned, there is scope for the student to choose whichever materials they prefer: single words, short dialogues, film excerpts, fiction books, etc.
Research questions:
1) What is the time course of emotional engagement during L2 processing?
2) Does the content of L2, e.g., relevant to native vs. L2 culture make a difference?
3) How can we most effectively communicate within intercultural groups?Ultimately this project may provide initial guidelines on intercultural discourse, and how to best engage, and effectively communicate with, interlocutors from different cultures.
Relevant papers
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Why are some languages easier to learn than others?
Project details
Supervisor: Professor Padraic Monaghan (Psychology) and Professor Patrick Rebuschat (Linguistics)
Research community: Cognitive
Contact: p.monaghan@lancaster.ac.uk
Relevant funding opportunities: Faculty Studentship, NWSSDTP
Project outline
This project combines psychology, typological linguistics, and language evolution to answer big questions in psycholinguistics: why are languages the way they are, and how did they get to be like this?
This project investigates how languages vary, and the extent to which that variation affects learning. Languages have different word orders, have different types of morphology (e.g., whether they indicate who is doing what to whom, whether they indicate what is past or future tense), and have different sound systems. This project will investigate which languages are easier or harder to acquire, when people learn languages in the lab but with an artificial language paradigm that resembles the way in which young children acquire language.
Relevant papers
Current PhD Opportunities - Developmental Psychology
Developmental PhDs Accordion
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Curiosity and creativity in development: exploring the link and cognitive mechanisms.
Project details
Supervisor: Dr Marina Bazhydai
Research community: Developmental
Contact: m.bazhydai@lancaster.ac.uk
Relevant funding opportunities: Faculty Studentship, NWSSDTP
Project outline
This project would investigate the intricate relationship between curiosity and creativity using longitudinal and cross-sectional mixed methods design. While the conceptual and theoretical links between curiosity and creativity have been proposed, empirical research, especially in developmental populations, demonstrating the relationship between these multi-dimensional psychological constructs and the underlying cognitive mechanisms is in its infancy. Furthermore, the predictive value of each concept on academic and wellbeing outcomes remains under-explored. In this project, children (as early as in infancy) will be tested using age-appropriate measures of curiosity and creativity, utilising different approaches, from experimental to self- and other-report. In addition to shedding light on the theoretical links between curiosity and creativity, the project has the potential to make substantial methodological advances in the field of research on both curiosity and creativity.
Relevant papers
Bazhydai, M., & Westermann, G. (2020). From curiosity, to wonder, to creativity: A cognitive developmental psychology perspective. In A. Schinkel (Ed)., Wonder, education, and human flourishing, VU University Press, Amsterdam.
Gross, M. E., Zedelius, C. M., & Schooler, J. W. (2020). Cultivating an understanding of curiosity as a seed for creativity. Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences, 35, 77-82.
Evans, N. S., & Jirout, J. J. (2023). Investigating the relation between curiosity and creativity. Journal of Creativity, 33(1), 100038.
Koutstaal, W., Kedrick, K., & Gonzalez-Brito, J. (2022). Capturing, clarifying, and consolidating the curiosity-creativity connection. Scientific reports, 12(1), 15300.
Schutte, N. S., & Malouff, J. M. (2020). A meta‐analysis of the relationship between curiosity and creativity. The Journal of Creative Behavior, 54(4), 940-947.
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Closing knowledge gaps: curiosity and teaching in early childhood
Project details
Supervisor: Dr Marina Bazhydai
Research community: Developmental; Cognitive
Contact: m.bazhydai@lancaster.ac.uk
Relevant funding opportunities: Faculty Studentship, NWSSDTP
Project outline
Children are curious learners, actively seeking information both through independent exploration and social learning. They are also able to share what they know with others from infancy, thus taking an active role in the social knowledge transmission process. This project would aim to investigate the connections between child-led information seeking and information sharing in young children. Through a series of experimental studies, it will pose research questions such as, how does active solicitation of information impact its subsequent transmission in childhood, e.g., whether curiosity-driven motivation to obtain new knowledge makes such knowledge more likely to be shared, what are the characteristics of information or the informants that make children more likely to share such knowledge, and what is the role of individual differences in both sides of the process. This line of investigation can include behavioural, including online interactive methods, and eye-tracking, including head-mounted or gaze-contingent methods.
Relevant papers
Bazhydai, M., & Harris, P. L. (2021). Infants actively seek and transmit knowledge via communication. Commentary on Phillips et al. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 44, e142. doi:10.1017/S0140525X20001405
Bazhydai, M., & Karadag, D. (2022). Can bifocal stance theory explain children’s selectivity in active information transmission? Commentary on Jagiello et al. Behavioral and Brain Sciences. doi:10.1017/S0140525X22001327
Bazhydai, M., Westermann, G., & Parise, E. (2020). “I don’t know but I know who to ask”: 12-month-olds actively seek information from knowledgeable adults. Developmental Science, 23. doi:10.1111/desc.12938
Gweon, H. (2021). Cognitive foundations of distinctively human social learning and teaching. Trends in Cognitive Sciences. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/8n34t
Liszkowski, U., Carpenter, M., Striano, T., & Tomasello, M. (2006). 12-and 18-month-olds point to provide information for others. Journal of Cognition and Development, 7(2), 173-187. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327647jcd0702_2
Ronfard, S., & Harris, P. L. (2018). Children’s decision to transmit information is guided by their evaluation of the nature of that information. Review of Philosophy and Psychology, 9(4), 849-861. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13164-017-0344-5
Strauss, S., Calero, C. I., & Sigman, M. (2014). Teaching, naturally. Trends in Neuroscience and Education, 3(2), 38-43. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tine.2014.05.001 -
Selective information transmission in development: investigating the role of the source and the learning context.
Project details
Supervisor: Dr Marina Bazhydai
Research community: Developmental; Cognitive
Contact: m.bazhydai@lancaster.ac.uk
Relevant funding opportunities: Faculty Studentship, NWSSDTP
Project outline
From infancy, children take an active role in sharing knowledge by actively seeking and transmitting information. While children’s role as active learners has received a lot of attention, their role as active transmitters of information and the factors that influence their transmission have remained relatively underexplored. Children begin actively transmitting information from infancy, and their transmission is influenced by the type of information that they transmit, among several other factors (for a review, see Ronfard & Harris, 2018). In this project, a series of experimental behavioural studies, possibly using a longitudinal design, would systematically investigate the role of the information source (e.g., the characteristics of the informant, such as competence and attractiveness) and the learning context (e.g., independently acquiring information vs via social learning). For example, studies could investigate whether social (e.g., confidence, deference to majority, ingroup status) vs epistemic (e.g., reliability, accuracy, expert status) characteristics of available social partners play a more important role in guiding children’s information transmission choices, or whether the property of information itself is selectively preferred (e.g., normative (how to do it properly, how to play a game) vs informative/instrumental (e.g., a novel word label or a function of novel toy). These studies will shed light on children’s evaluation of information and its sources in making decisions for sharing information as members of the broader society and the cognitive mechanisms underlying children’s selective teaching.
Relevant papers
Bazhydai, M., & Karadağ, D. (2022). Can bifocal stance theory explain children’s selectivity in active information transmission? Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 45. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0140525x22001327
Bazhydai, M., Silverstein, P., Parise, E., & Westermann, G. (2020). Two-year-old children preferentially transmit simple actions but not pedagogically demonstrated actions. Developmental Science, (April 2019), 1–13. https://doi.org/10.1111/desc.12941
Corriveau, K. H., Ronfard, S., & Cui, Y. K. (2018). Cognitive mechanisms associated with children’s selective teaching. Review of Philosophy and Psychology, 9, 831-848. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13164-017-0343-6
Crivello, C., Phillips, S., & Poulin‐Dubois, D. (2018). Selective social learning in infancy: looking for mechanisms. Developmental Science, 21(3), e12592.
Danovitch, J. H., Fisher, M., Schroder, H., Hambrick, D. Z., & Moser, J. (2019). Intelligence and neurophysiological markers of error monitoring relate to children's intellectual humility. Child development, 90(3), 924-939.Danovitch, J., & Noles, N. (2014, January). Categorization ability, but not theory of mind, contributes to children’s developing understanding of expertise. In Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (Vol. 36, No. 36).
Karadağ, D., & Soley, G. (2023). Children intend to teach conventional but not moral norms selectively to ingroup members. Developmental Psychology, 59(3), 567. https://doi.org/10.1037/dev0001455
Kuzyk, O., Grossman, S., & Poulin‐Dubois, D. (2020). Knowing who knows: Metacognitive and causal learning abilities guide infants’ selective social learning. Developmental Science, 23(3), e12904.
Pueschel, E. B., Ibrahim, A., Franklin, T., Skinner, S., & Moll, H. (2023). Four-year-olds selectively transmit true information. Plos One, 18(4), e0284694. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0284694
Pueschel, E. B., Shen, Y., Byrd, K., Indik, O., & Moll, H. (2023). Four-year-olds share general knowledge and use generic language when teaching. The Journal of Genetic Psychology, 184(3), 212-228. https://doi.org/10.1080/00221325.2022.2163875
Tong, Y., Wang, F., & Danovitch, J. (2020). The role of epistemic and social characteristics in children’s selective trust: Three meta‐analyses. Developmental Science, 23(2), e12895.
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Digital technologies: help or hindrance to children’s comprehension and learning
Project details
Supervisor: Professor Kate Cain
Research community: Developmental; Cognitive
Contact: k.cain@lancaster.ac.uk
Relevant funding opportunities: Faculty Studentship, NWSSDTP
Project outline
Despite the rapid change in children’s environments with the advance of technology and its use in the classroom and at home, research on the impact of digital technologies on children’s communication and language development is still scarce and highly fragmented. For both adults and children there is evidence for a ‘screen inferiority’ effect: better learning and recall when educational content is presented on paper relative to digital although study participants often note a preference for reading on screen.
Studies to date have not systematically examined the extent to which learner characteristics (such as ability, learning difficulties), text characteristics (genre, length), task factors (reading to study, for pleasure, etc), and/or the sociocultural context and use of different media may influence both task performance and media preference.
I would be keen to supervise a programme of work that takes a systematic approach to one or more of these potential moderators in young learners.
Relevant papers
Details of our ongoing European project looking at the role of digital in children's language and literacy development can be found at https://www.ntnu.edu/e-ladda
A recent overview and meta-analysis (not by our group) can be found here: Salmerón, L., Altamura, L., Delgado, P., Karagiorgi, A., & Vargas, C. (2023). Reading comprehension on handheld devices versus on paper: A narrative review and meta-analysis of the medium effect and its moderators. Journal of Educational Psychology.
See also my website, for recent publications on digital and related topics: https://www.lancaster.ac.uk/psychology/about-us/people/kate-cain
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Knowledge matters! How and when does knowledge support text comprehension and drive development?
Project details
Supervisor: Professor Kate Cain
Research community: Developmental
Contact: k.cain@lancaster.ac.uk
Relevant funding opportunities: Faculty Studentship, NWSSDTP
Project outline
Prior knowledge is one of the strongest contributors to reading and listening (text) comprehension across the lifespan, however, there is little clarity around which aspects of prior knowledge matter and under what conditions. A promising hypothesis is that individuals with richer and better connected semantic networks are quicker to activate and retrieve task-specific content, resulting in more accurate and efficient processing of text and learning. Yet only a handful of studies support this hypothesis: the coherence or interconnectedness of stored knowledge about concepts and meanings in long-term memory has been shown to influence learning and academic performance in high-school and college students.
I would be interested in supervising students investigating this hypothesis to examine the variation in the development of children’s listening and reading comprehension. Our work in progress (papers under review) shows that variation in knowledge can explain reading and listening comprehension differences between monolingual and bilingual young readers, and also between neurotypical and atypical learners.
A range of methods could be used, including: experimental and intervention studies (potentially coupled with corpus analysis), cross-sectional or longitudinal, with measurement of both the process of comprehension (moment-by-moment reading and listening times) and the product of comprehension (post-task understanding).
Relevant papers
Some of my published papers and chapters that explore knowledge (mostly vocabulary) and comprehension:
Currie , N. K., & Cain, K. (2023) Developmental differences in children’s generation of knowledge-based inferences, Discourse Processes, 60, 440-456.
Language and Reading Research Consortium, Currie, N. K., & Muijselaar, M. M. L. (2019).
Inference making in young children: the concurrent and longitudinal contributions of verbal working memory and vocabulary. Journal of Educational Psychology, 111, 1416-1431.Oakhill, J., Cain, K. McCarthy, D., & Field, Z. (2013). Making the link between vocabulary knowledge and reading comprehension skill. In M. A. Britt, S. R. Goldman & J-F Rouet (Eds), Reading: From Words to Multiple Texts (pp 101-114). Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group.
A nice overview on the dimensionality of knowledge: McCarthy, K. S., & McNamara, D. S. (2021). The multidimensional knowledge in text comprehension framework. Educational Psychologist, 56(3), 196-214.
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Does (implicit) prosody help in parsing written sentences?
Project details
Supervisor: Dr Margriet A. Groen
Research community: Developmental; Cognitive; Neuroscience
Contact: m.groen@lancaster.ac.uk
Relevant funding opportunities: Faculty Studentship, NWSSDTP
Project outline
Prosody—or the intonation and rhythm of speech—affects the interpretation of spoken sentences, by assisting listeners in segmenting sentences into syntactically and semantically appropriate chunks (Carlson, 2009; Cutler et al., 1997). More controversially, it has also been argued that implicit prosody facilitates comprehension of written material (Fodor, 2002; Webman-Shafran, 2017), and in the reading acquisition literature, the prosody with which a child reads a text has been consistently associated with that child’s reading comprehension level (Veenendaal et al., 2015). In this project, we will investigate whether adult and developing readers indeed use prosody in parsing written sentences using psycholinguistic and electrophysiological methods.
Relevant papers
Carlson, K. (2009). How prosody influences sentence comprehension. Language and Linguistics Compass, 3(5), 1188-1200.
Cutler, A., Dahan, D., and Van Donselaar, W. (1997). Prosody in the comprehension of spoken language: A literature review. Language and Speech, 40 (2), 141-201.
Fodor, J. D. (2002). Psycholinguistics cannot escape prosody. In: Speech Prosody 2002, International Conference.Veenendaal, N. J., Groen, M. A., and Verhoeven, L. (2015). What oral text reading fluency can reveal about reading comprehension. Journal of Research in Reading, 38(3), 213–225.
Webman-Shafran, R. (2017). Implicit prosody and parsing in silent reading. Journal of Research in Reading, 41(3), 546-563.
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Helping hands
Project details
Supervisor: Dr Margriet A. Groen
Research community: Developmental
Contact: m.groen@lancaster.ac.uk
Relevant funding opportunities: Faculty Studentship, NWSSDTP
Project outline
Gesture production influences language processing (Kita et al., 2017). Both adults and children perform better on language tasks if they are allowed to gesture. Relatedly, Mumford et al. (2023) found that encouraging 3-year-old to point with the right, but not the left, hand gave them a performance advantage on a word learning task. It has been suggested that producing gestures increases activation in brain areas involved in language processing, making it easier to form and access language representations. In this project, we will use transcranial Doppler ultrasound to measure brain activation directly, rather than rely on assumed language lateralisation based on performance on handedness tasks as has been done in previous studies. If right-handed pointing leads to increased left hemisphere activation, there should be an increased blood flow to left-hemisphere areas involved in language. Additionally, we will include children at risk for atypical language development and explore whether individual differences in gesture use are predictive of differences in language development in these groups.
Relevant papers
Kita, S., Alibali, M. W., and Chu, M. (2017). How do gestures influence thinking and speaking? the gesture-for-conceptualization hypothesis. Psychological Review, 124(3), 245-266.
Mumford, K. H., Aussems, S., and Kita, S. (2023). Encouraging pointing with the right hand, but not the left hand, gives right-handed 3-year-olds a linguistic advantage. Developmental Science, 26(3): e13315.
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Inter-brain communication in school-aged children during speech perception
Project details
Supervisor: Dr Hannah Stewart, Dr Helen Nuttall
Research community: Developmental; Neuroscience
Contact: h.stewart5@lancaster.ac.uk
Relevant funding opportunities: Faculty Studentship, NWSSDTP, EPSRC
Project outline
Whilst there is a good understanding of how hearing loss affects the hearing areas of the brain, there is little understanding of how hearing loss affects brain resources used for social interaction. This is especially true for children in school, many of whom may be struggling with undiagnosed hearing loss or listening difficulties associated with neurodivergence. Furthermore, speech communication is a social, interactive process. Yet, the majority of research in this area is limited to observing individuals listening alone to sounds. We are missing crucial understanding as to how hearing and listening disorders affect wider brain functions that support social interaction, particularly for school-aged children.
In this PhD project, we will determine how hearing and listening disorders impact brain functions for interactive social communication. The PhD student will be contributing essential new knowledge to the field of auditory cognitive neuroscience of how hearing and listening disorders affect the brain-basis of social communication. Specifically, the project will determine how hearing and listening disorders in children impact brain function underlying conversational turn-taking. The research will be conducted using a ‘hyperscanning’ approach, whereby the brains of multiple children interacting will be imaged simultaneously. The project will use a variety of brain imaging methods, including electroencephalography (EEG) and functional near infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS), and there may also be opportunities to learn and analyse Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) data. Knowledge generated from this project will aid understanding of child development and how to support educational outcomes and social and emotional wellbeing.
Relevant papers
http://wp.lancs.ac.uk/pelican/
http://wp.lancs.ac.uk/nosalab/ -
Speech processing in neurodevelopmental disorders
Project details
Supervisor: Dr Hannah Stewart
Research community: Developmental; Neuroscience
Contact: h.stewart5@lancaster.ac.uk
Relevant funding opportunities: Faculty Studentship, NWSSDTP, EPSRC
Project outline
Children experiencing common neurodevelopmental disorders often encounter challenges in their listening abilities, despite exhibiting normal hearing levels in clinical audiological assessments. For nearly 100 years, the audiogram has been used in such assessments. However, the audiogram offers a limited evaluation of hearing and listening skills. To gain a more comprehensive understanding, it is recommended to incorporate more sophisticated assessments, such as Speech in Noise tasks, in clinical audiological evaluations.
Our research, utilizing neuroimaging techniques such as Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), has unveiled a distinct deficit in the speech listening cortical network among children facing everyday listening difficulties, even though their non-speech listening and visual cortical networks appear unaffected. This underscores the critical role of speech processing. Yet, the specific aspects of speech leading to these deficits remain unknown.
This PhD project aims to delve into the intricacies of speech processing in children with everyday listening difficulties, but normal hearing levels. Employing electroencephalography (EEG), this project will scrutinize differences in children's responses to various types of speech, such as linguistic sentences versus mathematical sentences. Additionally, machine learning techniques will be employed to pinpoint when listening errors occur during speech processing — whether at the moment of a misunderstood word or towards the conclusion of a sentence when the child realizes the lack of coherence.
The PhD student embarking on this research journey will be immersed in the dynamic field of paediatric auditory cognitive neuroscience, working with clinical populations comprising primary school-aged children with common developmental disorders.
Relevant papers
http://wp.lancs.ac.uk/pelican/
http://wp.lancs.ac.uk/nosalab/ -
Curiosity-based exploration in infants and toddlers
Project details
Supervisor: Professor Gert Westermann
Research community: Developmental; Cognitive
Contact: g.westermann@lancaster.ac.uk
Relevant funding opportunities: Faculty Studentship, NWSSDTP
Project outline
In recent years some researchers have begun to focus on the active role infants play in their own learning. In my lab we investigate the behaviours and exploration strategies employed by infants to understand what drives such intrinsically motivated exploration and how it relates to infants’ learning. This PhD project would explore these questions further. For example, studies can investigate whether infants prefer to learn additional information about objects for which they already have some knowledge, or whether they prefer to engage with wholly new objects instead – and whether this preference changes over the first three years of life. Other studies can test the interactions between the complexity and novelty of objects in attracting infants’ attention, and how exploration strategies change with age as knowledge is accumulated. Overall, these projects will enable us to gain insights into the development of knowledge in infants and toddlers over the first years of life. The main method of this project will be (gaze-contingent) eye tracking, but neurophysiological and motion-tracking studies would also be possible.
Relevant papers
Bazhydai, M., Twomey, K. E., & Westermann, G. (2020). Exploration and curiosity. In Benson, J.B. (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Infant and Early Childhood Development (2nd ed.), Vol. 2: Cognition, Perception & Language, pp. 370-378. Academic Press
Chen, X., Twomey, K., & Westermann, G. (2022). Curiosity enhances incidental object encoding in 8-month-old infants. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 223, 105508 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jecp.2022.105508
Twomey, K., & Westermann, G. (2018). Curiosity-based learning in infants: A neurocomputational approach. Developmental Science, e12629. doi: 10.1111/desc.12629
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Addressing the bias-variance dilemma in deep learning networks
Project details
Supervisor: Professor Gert Westermann, Dr Hossein Rahmani (Computing)
Research community: Developmental; Cognitive; Neuroscience
Contact: g.westermann@lancaster.ac.uk
Relevant funding opportunities: Faculty Studentship, NWSSDTP, EPSRC
Project outline
Artificial (and natural) learning systems face a trade-off between bias and variance (Geman et al, 1992): the learner can be biased to learn only certain outcomes, which reduces the need for large amounts of training data but requires a priori knowledge of possible solutions to a problem or risks making the correct solution not learnable. As bias is lowered to make the learner more general, variance increases, requiring more training data to learn the solution. Current AI deep learning system have opted for low bias, using general architectures that require vast amounts of training data. Biological learning systems, in contrast, involve two mechanisms that reduce variance and allow for successful learning from sparse data. First, children’s brains develop in experience-dependent ways, adding structure as learning progresses (Quartz & Sejnowski, 1997). It has been shown that in artificial neural networks, such gradual structural adaptation can keep variance low while relaxing bias in problem-specific ways (Quartz, 1993). Second, biological learners are curious and have been argued to actively sample information that provides maximal learning progress given their current state (Gottlieb et al, 2013), and such active information sampling leads to learning as good as in an a priori optimally structured environment (Twomey & Westermann, 2018). In this PhD project we aim to integrate these biological mechanisms into deep learning systems to develop artificial systems that learn intelligently from smaller amounts of data than conventional systems, improving on current approaches while also providing new insights into children’s cognitive development.
Relevant papers
Geman, S., Bienenstock, E., & Doursat, R. (1992). Neural Networks and the Bias/Variance Dilemma. Neural Computation, 4(1), 1–58. https://doi.org/10.1162/neco.1992.4.1.1
Gottlieb, J., Oudeyer, P.-Y., Lopes, M., & Baranes, A. (2013). Information-seeking, curiosity, and attention: Computational and neural mechanisms. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 17(11), 585–593. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2013.09.001
Quartz, S. R. (1993). Neural networks, nativism, and the plausibility of constructivism. Cognition, 48(3), 223–242. https://doi.org/10.1016/0010-0277(93)90041-S
Quartz, S. R., & Sejnowski, T. J. (1997). The neural basis of cognitive development: A constructivist manifesto. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 20(4), 537–556. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X97001581
Twomey, K. E., & Westermann, G. (2018). Curiosity-based learning in infants: A neurocomputational approach. Developmental Science, 21(4), e12629. https://doi.org/10.1111/desc.12629
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Computational modelling of curiosity in infants
Project details
Supervisor: Professor Gert Westermann
Research community: Developmental; Cognitive; Neuroscience
Contact: g.westermann@lancaster.ac.uk
Relevant funding opportunities: Faculty Studentship, NWSSDTP
Project outline
Infants and older children play an active role in their learning through intrinsically motivated exploration of their environment. One mechanism that has been suggested to explain such exploratory behaviour is learning progress maximisation: learners choose at each point information from which they can learn maximally. We implemented such active exploration in a neural network of infant categorisation (Twomey & Westermann, 2018) which suggested that infants’ exploratory choices are affected by what information is available to them, their existing knowledge, and the learning mechanism itself. The focus of this PhD project is to develop this model further to gain a deeper understanding of the factors shaping active exploration in infants’ knowledge acquisition. There is also the opportunity to complement the modelling work with experimental studies to compare model and infant behaviours.
One strand of investigation could examine the role of early language on shaping knowledge and active exploration by presenting objects to the model (and infants) with and without labels and analysing the resulting object representations. Another strand could examine the interplay between short- and long-term knowledge in shaping exploration strategies for new objects. A third strand could investigate the relation between learning progress maximisation and prediction error minimisation as two related explanations for active exploration in young children. Overall, this project would aim to gain a better understanding of the factors driving and shaping infants’ and toddlers’ active learning about the world around them.
Relevant papers
Twomey, K., & Westermann, G. (2019). Building the foundations of language: mechanisms of curiosity-driven learning. In: Horst, J., & Torkildsen, J. (eds.), International Handbook of Language Acquisition, pp. 102-114. Oxford, New York: Routledge
Twomey, K., & Westermann, G. (2018). Curiosity-based learning in infants: A neurocomputational approach. Developmental Science, e12629. doi: 10.1111/desc.12629
Twomey, K. & Westermann. G. (2018). Learned labels shape pre-speech infants’ object representations. Infancy, 23, 61–73. doi: 10.1111/infa.12201
Westermann, G. and Mareschal, D. (2014) From perceptual to language-mediated categorization. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 369, 20120391. doi: 10.1098/rstb.2012.0391
Westermann, G. and Mareschal, D. (2012). Mechanisms of developmental change in infant categorization. Cognitive Development, 27, 367-382. doi: 10.1016/j.cogdev.2012.08.004
Current PhD Opportunities - Neuroscience
Neuroscience PhDs Accordion
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Neurocognitive Correlates of Aberrant Experiences and Disorders of Consciousness
Project details
Supervisor: Dr Jason J Braithwaite
Research community: Neuroscience; Cognitive
Contact: j.j.braithwaite@lancaster.ac.uk
Relevant funding opportunities: Faculty Studentship, NWSSDTP
Project outline
My research is in the field of the neurocognition of aberrant experiences, including hallucinations, delusions, and distortions in perception / consciousness in neurotypical and migraine populations. I offer current projects in topic areas such as; (i) embodiment, (ii) multisensory integration, and cortical hyperexcitability. Of particular interest is when these processes breakdown and produce the specific aberrant and anomalous experiences that they do.
Typical examples of projects include; (i) visual cortical hyperexcitability and its relationship with aberrant visual perceptions, (ii) disembodiment and the out-of-body experience, and (iii) cognitive-affective states and depersonalization / dissociative experiences. The projects I offer can involve a number of methods and techniques such as multi-channel transcranial electric brain stimulation (MtES) to excite or inhibit specific elements of crucial neural networks and biophysical measures such as skin conductance responses for quantifying emotional / cognitive-affective processing across participants and specifically in those predispose to particular aberrant experiences.
I am happy to hear from prospective students interested in examining these fascinating experiences and illuminating the underlying neurocognition in order to provide a more comprehensive understanding of the experiences and consciousness itself.
Relevant papers
https://www.lancaster.ac.uk/psychology/research/labs/aberrant-experiences-laboratory/
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Linking neuronal adaptation to psychological memory in the human brain
Project details
Supervisor: Dr Patrick May
Research community: Neuroscience
Contact: p.may1@lancaster.ac.uk
Relevant funding opportunities: Faculty Studentship, NWSSDTP
Project outline
A classic index of memory in sensory processing is the phenomenon of adaptation: the diminishing of neuronal responses with stimulus repetition. The effect can be characterised through its magnitude – by how much the response diminishes – and through its lifetime, that is, the maximal interval between the repeated stimuli at which the effect is still observed. It indicates that previous stimuli leave an imprint in the brain that affects the processing and representation of incoming stimuli. These imprints encode the past stimulation and can therefore be regarded as memory traces. Adaptation is observed in all sensory systems of the brain, in both animals and humans. In human auditory cortex, adaptation as observed in the event-related response of the EEG and MEG has a lifetime of several seconds, and is highly participant-specific. Previous research suggests that this adaptation might be an index of psychological sensory or working memory. However, there is no conclusive evidence for this link, and the neuronal basis of memory remains largely speculative. The proposed PhD project would investigate whether the variation in the lifetime of psychological memory is explained by the variation in adaptation lifetime across normal participants and, for example, across age. The research will utilise psychoacoustic experiments and EEG measurements in humans, and might also tests prediction generated by computational modelling work carried out by the supervisor.
Relevant papers
Lu, Z. L., Williamson, S. J., & Kaufman, L. (1992). Behavioral lifetime of human auditory sensory memory predicted by physiological measures. Science (New York, N.Y.), 258(5088), 1668–1670. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1455246
May, P. J., & Tiitinen, H. (2010). Mismatch negativity (MMN), the deviance-elicited auditory deflection, explained. Psychophysiology, 47(1), 66–122. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1469-8986.2009.00856.x"
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Sleep effects on memory
Project details
Supervisor: Professor Padraic Monaghan (Psychology) and Dr Sana Hannan (Biomedical and Life Sciences)
Research community: Neuroscience
Contact: p.monaghan@lancaster.ac.uk
Relevant funding opportunities: Faculty Studentship, NWSSDTP
Project outline
Sleep affects the way in which we learn and store new information. In this project, we will investigate how different sleep stages affect learning of new information. The study will use polysomnography to determine whether certain sleep stages relate to different aspects of learning. The kinds of information can be emotional, or language stimuli (or both). A strong background in statistical analysis, biological psychology, and keen interest in signal detection methods would be an advantage.
Relevant papers
https://www.lancaster.ac.uk/language-learning/people/padraic-monaghan
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Exercise, neuroplasticity, and brain health
Project details
Supervisor: Dr Helen Nuttall, Dr Kate Slade (Lancaster Medical School), Dr Chris Gaffney (Lancaster Medical School)
Research community: Neuroscience
Contact: h.nuttall1@lancaster.ac.uk
Relevant funding opportunities: Faculty Studentship, NWSSDTP, EPSRC
Project outline
The positive effects of exercise to brain (and mental and physical) health are vast. Long-term exercise increases growth factors in the blood, which collectively increase capacity for neuroplasticity. Neuroplasticity refers to the brain’s ability to change its activity through structural and functional reorganisation, i.e., growing new brain cells and new connections between them. Neuroplasticity underpins learning, so If we can increase neuroplasticity then we can increase the learning potential of the brain. Exercise also helps the brain to build-up ‘cognitive reserve’, which enables neural flexibility and cognitive strategies that both moderate the negative influence of age-related brain deterioration on cognitive performance. In this PhD project, we will explore the benefits of exercise for optimising ‘brain fitness’ in readiness for learning and supporting cognitive reserve in older age. We will explore how exercise can support individuals’ brains to adapt to new information or stressors, and support learning efficiency (e.g., when adapting to medical interventions, such as a ew hearing aid). The PhD will utilise a number of methods including electroencephalography (EEG) and functional near infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) to measure and image brain function, as well as biomedical techniques aligned to measuring physical health and fitness. The PhD is a cross-disciplinary project and will be jointly supervised across the Department of Psychology and Lancaster University Medical School, and the student will have the opportunity to experience and contribute to both research environments.
Relevant papers
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Predictive Mechanisms of Voice Hearing and Auditory Verbal Hallucinations in Non-Clinical and Clinical Populations
Project details
Supervisor: Dr Bo Yao
Research community: Neuroscience; Cognitive
Contact: b.yao1@lancaster.ac.uk
Relevant funding opportunities: Faculty Studentship, NWSSDTP
Project outline
This project seeks to advance our understanding of voice-hearing (VH) and its progression to Auditory Verbal Hallucinations (AVH), critical symptoms in mental health conditions like schizophrenia. Influenced by the brain's predictive mechanisms, these phenomena involve our mind’s anticipation of what we will say or hear, based on past experiences and beliefs.
Our objective is to explore these predictive processes from adolescence to adulthood and to identify early indicators for the transition from VH to AVH, crucial for early detection and intervention. The research will:
1. Examine changes in the brain's expectations about speaking and hearing that may lead to VH, assessing individual susceptibility to VH and AVH.
2. Identify brain processes controlling expectations for speaking and hearing, linking theoretical ideas to observable neurophysiological markers.
3. Investigate how these expectations evolve during adolescence to pinpoint patterns signalling the risk of VH and AVH.
Utilising behavioural and brain-scanning methods, including electroencephalography (EEG), we aim to monitor brain signals related to these expectations. This approach will provide insights into the developmental changes potentially leading to VH.
Our collaboration with diverse groups, including healthcare partners and community organisations, ensures our research is impactful and relevant. By disseminating findings through various channels, we aim to contribute to the scientific community, public understanding, and policy formulation. The project's goal is to enhance prevention and early detection strategies, ultimately reducing the healthcare and societal impacts of VH and AVH.
Relevant papers
For further information about the research we do, please visit the Language, Inner Speech and Neuroscience (LISN) lab website
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Revolutionising the EEG Detection and Understanding of Inner Speech and Auditory Verbal Hallucinations (AVHs)
Project details
Supervisor: Dr Bo Yao (Lancaster University), Professor Xin Yao (University of Birmingham)
Research community: Neuroscience; Cognitive
Contact: b.yao1@lancaster.ac.uk
Relevant funding opportunities: Faculty Studentship, NWSSDTP, EPSRC
Project outline
This project aims to transform our understanding and detection of inner speech and auditory verbal hallucinations (AVHs). Inner speech, our internal dialogue, and AVHs, hearing distressing voices without external stimuli, are challenging to study due to their subjective, multifaceted nature.
We propose an innovative approach combining electroencephalograph (EEG) and explainable machine learning (ML). EEG is non-invasive and cost-effective, and has high temporal resolution for tracking rapid neurodynamics involved in inner speech and AVHs. Explainable ML will provide interpretable and potentially real-time detection and classification of these phenomena, enhancing understanding and clinical transparency.
The first phase focuses on classifying subtypes of inner speech, such as dialogic vs. monologic, and task-elicited vs. spontaneous types, using EEG to uncover neural mechanisms underpinning these variations. The subsequent phase extends to testing these ML models on experimentally induced AVHs in non-clinical populations and clinical AVHs in patients, refining them to accurately identify different hallucination types.
This approach promises to not only detect mental voice hearing experiences but also to elucidate how inner speech and AVHs are neurocognitively similar and distinct. By merging advanced EEG analysis with state-of-the-art, explainable machine learning, the project is set to make substantial contributions to cognitive neuroscience and mental health, offering novel avenues for diagnosis, treatment, and transparent clinical decision-making.
Relevant papers
For further information about the research we do, please visit the Language, Inner Speech and Neuroscience (LISN) lab website
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Exploring the Impact of Mandarin-English Cross-Linguistic Variation on Inner Speech, Cognition, and the Brain
Project details
Supervisor: Dr Bo Yao (Lancaster University), Professor Xin Yao (University of Birmingham)
Research community: Neuroscience; Cognitive
Contact: b.yao1@lancaster.ac.uk
Relevant funding opportunities: Faculty Studentship, NWSSDTP
Project outline
This project investigates how cross-linguistic differences in lexical specificity, tense marking, and subject prominence influence cognition through inner speech, the internal dialogue in the mind, particularly in Mandarin and English. The study aims to explore how these linguistic variations shape the manifestation of inner speech, and consequently, impact cognitive processes such as categorisation, memory, problem-solving, and self-reflection.
To achieve this, the research will employ a combination of self-report methods, cognitive testing, eye tracking and electroencephalography (EEG). This multifaceted approach will provide a comprehensive understanding of the phenomenological characteristics and neurocognitive mechanisms of inner speech across various cognitive domains. The study will include participants who are native speakers of Mandarin and English, as well as high-proficiency Mandarin-English bilinguals. This focus on cross-linguistic dynamics is designed to provide valuable insights into how linguistic features influence thought processes and its neurocognitive underpinnings, thereby making interdisciplinary contributions to the fields of psycholinguistics, cognitive sciences, and neuroscience.
The implications of this research are profound, extending to our understanding of linguistic and cognitive diversity and the neural representation of language, inner speech, and cognition. Additionally, the findings hold potential applications in education, particularly in developing strategies for promoting bilingualism and enhancing curriculums in second language learning.
Relevant papers
For further information about the research we do, please visit the Language, Inner Speech and Neuroscience (LISN) lab website
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Inter-brain communication in school-aged children during speech perception
Project details
Supervisor: Dr Hannah Stewart, Dr Helen Nuttall
Research community: Developmental; Neuroscience
Contact: h.stewart5@lancaster.ac.uk
Relevant funding opportunities: Faculty Studentship, NWSSDTP, EPSRC
Project outline
Whilst there is a good understanding of how hearing loss affects the hearing areas of the brain, there is little understanding of how hearing loss affects brain resources used for social interaction. This is especially true for children in school, many of whom may be struggling with undiagnosed hearing loss or listening difficulties associated with neurodivergence. Furthermore, speech communication is a social, interactive process. Yet, the majority of research in this area is limited to observing individuals listening alone to sounds. We are missing crucial understanding as to how hearing and listening disorders affect wider brain functions that support social interaction, particularly for school-aged children.
In this PhD project, we will determine how hearing and listening disorders impact brain functions for interactive social communication. The PhD student will be contributing essential new knowledge to the field of auditory cognitive neuroscience of how hearing and listening disorders affect the brain-basis of social communication. Specifically, the project will determine how hearing and listening disorders in children impact brain function underlying conversational turn-taking. The research will be conducted using a ‘hyperscanning’ approach, whereby the brains of multiple children interacting will be imaged simultaneously. The project will use a variety of brain imaging methods, including electroencephalography (EEG) and functional near infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS), and there may also be opportunities to learn and analyse Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) data. Knowledge generated from this project will aid understanding of child development and how to support educational outcomes and social and emotional wellbeing.
Relevant papers
http://wp.lancs.ac.uk/pelican/
http://wp.lancs.ac.uk/nosalab/ -
Speech processing in neurodevelopmental disorders
Project details
Supervisor: Dr Hannah Stewart
Research community: Developmental; Neuroscience
Contact: h.stewart5@lancaster.ac.uk
Relevant funding opportunities: Faculty Studentship, NWSSDTP, EPSRC
Project outline
Children experiencing common neurodevelopmental disorders often encounter challenges in their listening abilities, despite exhibiting normal hearing levels in clinical audiological assessments. For nearly 100 years, the audiogram has been used in such assessments. However, the audiogram offers a limited evaluation of hearing and listening skills. To gain a more comprehensive understanding, it is recommended to incorporate more sophisticated assessments, such as Speech in Noise tasks, in clinical audiological evaluations.
Our research, utilizing neuroimaging techniques such as Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), has unveiled a distinct deficit in the speech listening cortical network among children facing everyday listening difficulties, even though their non-speech listening and visual cortical networks appear unaffected. This underscores the critical role of speech processing. Yet, the specific aspects of speech leading to these deficits remain unknown.
This PhD project aims to delve into the intricacies of speech processing in children with everyday listening difficulties, but normal hearing levels. Employing electroencephalography (EEG), this project will scrutinize differences in children's responses to various types of speech, such as linguistic sentences versus mathematical sentences. Additionally, machine learning techniques will be employed to pinpoint when listening errors occur during speech processing — whether at the moment of a misunderstood word or towards the conclusion of a sentence when the child realizes the lack of coherence.
The PhD student embarking on this research journey will be immersed in the dynamic field of paediatric auditory cognitive neuroscience, working with clinical populations comprising primary school-aged children with common developmental disorders.
Relevant papers
http://wp.lancs.ac.uk/pelican/
http://wp.lancs.ac.uk/nosalab/ -
Connectivity models of hearing loss in children
Project details
Supervisor: Dr Hannah Stewart
Research community: Developmental; Neuroscience
Contact: h.stewart5@lancaster.ac.uk
Relevant funding opportunities: Faculty Studentship, NWSSDTP, EPSRC
Project outline
Children with hearing loss are falling a year behind their peers in educational attainment. This PhD project will use brain imaging data to model cortical connectivity of mild-to-moderate hearing loss (MMHL) in children.
Ensuring a good fit of hearing aids and their continued use is especially important in children as they develop their language skills. Children’s brains are plastic and through prolonged associative pairing between stimuli (clear communicative speech) and rewards (ease of understanding) they adapt to new hearing aids. This is called auditory learning and occurs during normal, everyday use of their hearing aids.
Multimodal Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) allows us to quantify functional (grey matter) and structural (white matter) human brain properties. There is currently no MRI-based cortical model of children with MMHL. This PhD project uses a large multimodal MRI dataset of primary school aged children with normal hearing and MMHL before and after a device intervention (a new hearing aid). Data-led networks can be used to model: the functional connectivity of temporal correlations between anatomically separate brain regions; and the structural connectivity of white matter tracts physically interconnecting brain regions. This PhD project will first build baseline connectivity models comparing the children with MMHL to their normal hearing peers. Second, how these connectivity models adapt to a new hearing aid will be explored. Finally, these models will be used to examine the variability in behavioural outcomes of cognition, language and educational abilities and the relationship with hearing aid usage.
Relevant papers
http://wp.lancs.ac.uk/pelican/
http://wp.lancs.ac.uk/nosalab/
Current PhD Opportunities - Social Psychology
Social PhDs Accordion
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Allyship and Phobia: Predictors for attitudes towards members of the LGBTQIA+ community
Project details
Supervisor: Dr Jaime Benjamin
Research community: Social
Contact: j.benjamin@lancaster.ac.uk
Relevant funding opportunities: Faculty Studentship, NWSSDTP
Project outline
LGBTQIA+ is an umbrella term that captures a large spectrum of sexual orientations and gender identities. While this term is used to discuss a singular group, members of this community do not identify with the same groups, nor do they experience the same social stigma and prejudices. Individuals who identify as transgender (or trans) live as a gender that was not assigned to them at birth. Transgender identities have become more accepted within the UK in the last few decades and sparked an increase in research on trans identities. However, there remains a large gap in the research relating to the unique psychology of those who identify as Non-Binary, a term used to refer to individuals who identify outside of the binary genders of “man” or “woman”. Previous research has found that people who identify as Non-Binary experience a greater prejudice than other members of the LGBTQIA+ community. Further, while identifying as a woman and a feminist are known predictors for LGBTQIA+ support, there are those who still identity as feminist women but do not support trans-identities. This project seeks to examine the psychological factors that predict allyship and phobia, specifically with a focus on trans- and non-binary gender identities. The factors explored will vary across both the targets of prejudice (e.g. Trans-identifying individuals) as well as the perpetrators of prejudice (e.g. Trans-exclusionary Feminists).
Relevant papers
Worthen, M. G. (2021). Why can’t you just pick one? The stigmatisation of non-binary/genderqueer people by cis and trans men and women: An empirical test of
norm-centred stigma theory. Sex Roles, 85(5), 343–356.Worthen, M.G.F. (2016). Hetero-cis–normativity and the gendering of transphobia. InternationalJournal of Transgenderism, 17(1), 31–57. DOI:10.1080/15532739.2016.1149538"
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Cross-cultural experiences of sexually explicit material
Project details
Supervisor: Dr Jaime Benjamin, Dr Mengzhen Lim (Temple Univerity-Japan Campus)
Research community: Social
Contact: j.benjamin@lancaster.ac.uk
Relevant funding opportunities: Faculty Studentship, NWSSDTP
Project outline
The increase in internet access has made sexually explicit material widely accessible globally via the internet. Individuals of all ages can now be passively exposed to content that previously was reserved for those who were actively seeking it. Previous studies have examined the effects of viewing sexually explicit material usage. Some research has found that watching sexually explicit material can have harmful effects such as addictions, and providing a skewed perception of how to engage in sexually explicit acts. However, other research has examined the potential usefulness of viewing, such as for educational purposes, leisurely enjoyment, and self-discovery. There remains a lack of empirical evidence differentiating the potential harms and benefits for sexually explicit material. Therefore, this study aims to understand how people perceive what constitutes the benefits and harms of sexually explicit material. We would like to understand why sexually explicit material is used and how using sexually explicit material has affected one's life. It will take a cross-cultural approach, as sexually explicit material is now widely accessible globally via the internet. While sexually explicit material is available globally, different cultures will perceive the content differently. This study will inform future projects with the aim of developing a sexually explicit material literacy programme to help facility health engagement.
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Masculine or Moral: The impact of plant-based diets on perceptions of attractiveness
Project details
Supervisor: Dr Jaime Benjamin
Research community: Social
Contact: j.benjamin@lancaster.ac.uk
Relevant funding opportunities: Faculty Studentship, NWSSDTP
Project outline
Gender roles are culturally constructed expectations and beliefs that define masculinity and femininity and influence the behaviour of both men and women. Individuals may then adhere to these gender roles and the associated beliefs. A behaviour that is strongly associated with conformity to masculinity is meat consumption. Previous research found that there were almost twice as many female vegans than there were males. Men consume more meat than women and it is easier to justify this behaviour with masculine style strategies such as, believing that they are hierarchically higher than animals. Meat consumption may be unconsciously encouraged by women, as gender stereotypical behaviour is often rewarded through mate selection. Previous research found that vegetarian diets are generally considered to be less masculine than meat-based diets, and omnivores exhibit more prejudice against vegetarian men than women. However, those with a vegetarian diet are also viewed as more moralistic. This moral signalling may have implications for mating, whereby those who are less masculine may be deemed as more attractive via the virtues. This project would examine the masculinity vs morality of men who either adhere to a plant-based diet or a meat-based diet, and whether this impacts the attractiveness of these men from both an evolutionary and social perspective.
Relevant papers
González‐Álvarez, J. (2017). Men dissociate sexual attraction from moral judgement more than women. International journal of psychology, 52(5), 381-388.
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Can We Catch Lies by Asking Tough Questions?
Project details
Supervisor: Dr David A. Neequaye
Research community: Social; Cognitive
Contact: d.neequaye@lancaster.ac.uk
Relevant funding opportunities: Faculty Studentship, NWSSDTP
Project outline
This project aims to examine the idea that asking tough questions can expose lies—because lying is more demanding than truth-telling. As such, asking tough questions makes the liar’s task even more burdensome than the truth-teller's. The core of that hypothesis and its justifications (seven in total) contain unanswered research questions. For example, liars must suppress the truth while lying, and this handicap makes lying challenging such that one can exploit the challenge to expose lies. The theoretical fitness of catching lies by increasing cognitive load is variable and unknown, making its rationale subject to debate. Those ambiguities prevent analysts from ascertaining the strength of the hypothesis. This project aims to examine those ambiguities to better specify and test the idea of catching lies via increasing cognitive load.
Relevant papers
Neequaye, D. A. (2022). A Metascientific Empirical Review of Cognitive Load Lie Detection. Collabra: Psychology, 8(1), 57508. https://doi.org/10.1525/collabra.57508
Neequaye, D. A. (2023). A Metatheoretical Review of Cognitive Load Lie Detection. Collabra: Psychology, 9(1), 87497. https://doi.org/10.1525/collabra.87497
Vrij, A., Fisher, R. P., & Blank, H. (2017). A cognitive approach to lie detection: A meta-analysis. Legal and Criminological Psychology, 22(1), 1–21. https://doi.org/10.1111/lcrp.12088
Mac Giolla, E., & Luke, T. J. (2021). Does the cognitive approach to lie detection improve the accuracy of human observers? Applied Cognitive Psychology, 35(2), 385–392. https://doi.org/10.1002/acp.3777
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Examining racial and cultural bias in artificial intelligence (AI).
Project details
Supervisor: D. Sophie Nightingale; Dr Emily Winter (Computer Science), and Dr James Grant (Maths and Stats)
Research community: Social; Cognitive
Contact: s.nightingale1@lancaster.ac.uk
Relevant funding opportunities: Faculty Studentship, NWSSDTP, EPSRC
Project outline
Research has shown that AI-generated faces are indistinguishable from real human faces. Yet the algorithms that generate such faces are typically trained disproportionately on white faces which leads to these faces being especially realistic. Similar concerns about racial and cultural bias have been found in other algorithms too, for example software used for recruitment decisions, predicting recidivism, and facial recognition. Although use of such biased software can have detrimental consequences for individuals, there remains a gap in research in understanding how to use AI in a more responsible and fair way. Furthermore, research is needed to better appreciate varying digital citizenship and computational identity across cultural groups, leading to differential representation in large-scale datasets.
This project will take an interdisciplinary approach to examine the extent of bias within AI systems and approaches to debias and promote ethical AI.
To gain a detailed appreciation of the landscape and develop optimal solutions, the work will include a supervisory team spanning psychology, computer science, maths and statistics. The planned work programme will involve, for example, psychophysical experiments and surveys, machine learning, and human-computer interaction designs. There will be opportunities to work with external stakeholders, e.g., Google, to guide real-world applications from the work.Relevant papers
The work links with our Computation and AI for Social Science Hub
A couple of references to consider:
Nightingale, S. J., & Farid, H. (2022). AI-synthesized faces are indistinguishable from real faces and more trustworthy. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 119(8), e2120481119.Miller, E. J., Steward, B. A., Witkower, Z., Sutherland, C. A., Krumhuber, E. G., & Dawel, A. (2023). AI Hyperrealism: Why AI Faces Are Perceived as More Real Than Human Ones. Psychological Science, 09567976231207095.