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.
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 Abigail Fiske, Dr Stefan Leach, Dr Alice Milne, Dr David Neequaye, Dr Alice Rees, Dr Heather Shaw, 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.
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.
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 5pm on Monday 3rd February 2025
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, Faculty or Joint LU-China Scholarship Council Studentship, please complete this step by 5pm on Monday 3rd February 2025.
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.
Supervisor: Dr Bo Yao
Research community: Cognitive
Contact: b.yao1@lancaster.ac.uk
Relevant funding opportunities: Faculty Studentship, NWSSDTP, EPSRC, LU-CSC
What does the mind say when no one is listening? How does it differ from our spoken words? What insights can it offer about our thought processes, emotions, and decision-making? How does it evolve across different contexts and life stages? Most importantly, why does our mind engage in this internal dialogue?
We will answer this question by building and analysing a multimodal linguistic corpus of verbalised thoughts. We use a thinking-aloud protocol, asking participants to verbalise their thoughts across various task conditions. We then analyse linguistic patterns and compare them to patterns observed in spoken communication and observed in experience sampling of inner speech.
An USP of the project is to couple verbalised thoughts with neural and physiological recordings, and use machine learning to uncover the connections between thought patterns, cognition, and neurophysiological responses.
Our research has far-reaching implications for cognitive science, mental health, education, and artificial intelligence. By transcribing and analysing the language of thought, we'll not only deepen our understanding of human cognition but also pave the way for AI that can simulate human-like thought processes.
https://lisn-lab.org/
Supervisor: Dr Amy Atkinson; Dr Tom Beesley
Research community: Cognitive
Contact: amy.atkinson@lancaster.ac.uk
Relevant funding opportunities: Faculty Studentship, NWSSDTP, LU-CSC
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 plays an important role in many everyday activities, including problem-solving and decision-making. Despite this, working memory is limited in capacity, particularly in certain groups (e.g. children).
Existing research has shown that both adults and children can direct their attention to what is important or goal-relevant in working memory. However, in both groups, there are large individual differences, and some people are much more able (or willing) to direct attention than others.
This project would offer the opportunities to explore this further, either in adult participants only or across childhood development. Relevant questions could include:
- How do people prioritise what is important in working memory?
- Why are there individual differences in how well individuals can prioritise information in working memory?
- How is the ability to direct attention in working memory similar or different to directing attention during perception?
- How can the ability to direct attention be improved?
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.
Atkinson, A. L., Allen, R. J., Baddeley, A. D., Hitch, G. J., & Waterman, A. H. (2021). Can valuable information be prioritized in verbal working memory? Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 47(5), 747.
Supervisor: Dr Margriet Groen
Research community: Cognitive
Contact: m.groen@lancaster.ac.uk
Relevant funding opportunities: Faculty Studentship, NWSSDTP, LU-CSC
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 adults and developing readers indeed use prosody in parsing written sentences using psycholinguistic and electrophysiological methods.
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.
Supervisor: Dr Francesca Citron
Research community: Cognitive
Contact: f.citron@lancaster.ac.uk
Relevant funding opportunities: Faculty Studentship, NWSSDTP, LU-CSC
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.
See in-text references or email me for further readings. Link to Emotion and Communication Lab here https://wp.lancs.ac.uk/emocomlab/
Supervisor: Dr Francesca Citron (Psychology, Lancaster Uni), Dr Leyla De Amicis (Education, Glasgow Uni)
Research community: Cognitive
Contact: f.citron@lancaster.ac.uk
Relevant funding opportunities: Faculty Studentship, NWSSDTP, EPSRC, LU-CSC
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. 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 using virtual reality (VR). Cultural differences will be addressed by additionally targeting participants from a non-British culture.
See in-text references. Link to Emotion and Communication Lab https://wp.lancs.ac.uk/emocomlab/
Supervisor: Dr Francesca Citron; Dr Marina Bazhydai
Research community: Cognitive
Contact: f.citron@lancaster.ac.uk
Relevant funding opportunities: Faculty Studentship, NWSSDTP, LU-CSC
Creativity plays an essential role in wellbeing, such as finding pleasure and meaning in life, in personal growth, academic performance, but also professional performance and satisfaction. Furthermore, creativity can be a catalyst for entrepreneurial initiatives, and trigger economic and social change. One of the most effective methods to enhance creativity is trough mindfulness meditation. However, the literature also shows mixed findings, in that different meditation practices can enhance or hamper or show no effect on creativity. Also, different types of creativity can be differently affected.
The present project aims to:
1) systematically investigate which types of meditation practices are most likely to enhance creativity, and which types of creativity;
2) enquire into participants’ subjective experience of their meditative practice and measure individual differences (personality, trait creativity, mindful awareness). In fact, individual participants may experience many fluctuations during the practice, different extents, and types of mind-wandering, or rather stillness. Such differences are likely to affect creativity outcomes.
3) adopt naturalistic and ecologically valid measures of creativity by evaluating the novelty and originality of art products, and by testing art students and art amateurs.
Methodology:
In addition to lab-based creativity tasks, this project will assess creativity by having people produce art products such as dance performance, visual art, or music, which will allow for better generalisation of findings to ‘the real world’. There is also scope for measuring EEG responses during meditative practices.
Ultimately, the findings will represent the groundwork for developing a creativity enhancement intervention programme.
Lebuda, I., Zabelina, D. L., & Karwowski, M. (2016). Mind full of ideas: A meta-analysis of the mindfulness–creativity link. Personality and Individual Differences, 93, 22-26.
Bashmakova, I., & Shcherbakova, O. (2021). Just open your mind? A randomized, controlled study on the effects of meditation on creativity. Frontiers in psychology, 1685.
Lippelt, D. P., Hommel, B., & Colzato, L. S. (2014). Focused attention, open monitoring and loving kindness meditation: effects on attention, conflict monitoring, and creativity–A review. Frontiers in psychology, 5, 1083.
Emotion and Communication Lab: https://wp.lancs.ac.uk/emocomlab/
Supervisor: Dr Kate Messenger; co-supervisors could be from Psychology or Linguistics at Lancaster.
Research community: Cognitive
Contact: K.Messenger@lancaster.ac.uk
Relevant funding opportunities: Faculty Studentship, NWSSDTP, LU-CSC
Syntactic alignment, or priming, is a robustly established phenomenon which has been widely applied to questions of language representation, acquisition and processing. Syntactic alignment is observed a cross a wide range of speaker populations, languages, language modalities, contexts, structures and experimental methods. In all studies, there is, however, large variation in the extent to which speakers exhibit alignment but the reasons for this remain unknown. Understanding more about why people do or do not align can enhance our undestanding of the mechanisms and functions of alignment.
Projects could explore any of the following possible avenues of explanation: linguistic reasons (level of vocabulary or syntax development) for differences in priming, e.g. do those with greater knowledge of language show more priming; cognitive reasons (memory, attention) for differences in priming, e.g. are speakers less likely to prime if they are distracted or if their working memory is taxed; socio-cognitive reasons for variation in priming effects, e.g. are speakers more likely to align if they are more empathetic or more pro-social, or if their conversation partner is more like them.
Weatherholtz, K., Campbell-Kibler, K., & Jaeger, T. (2014). Socially-mediated syntactic alignment. Language Variation and Change, 26(3), 387-420 Abrahams, L., De Fruyt, F., & Hartsuiker, R.J. (2018). Syntactic chameleons: Are there individual differences in syntactic mimicry and its possible prosocial effects? Acta Psychologica, 191, 1-14, 10.1016/j.actpsy.2018.08.018
These two papers provide interesting discussions of some explanations for variation in priming and could be useful starting points, depending on interest areas.
Supervisor: Dr Kate Messenger; it would be ideal to have a co-supervisor in Linguistics at Lancaster
Research community: Cognitive
Contact: k.messenger@lancaster.ac.uk
Relevant funding opportunities: Faculty Studentship, NWSSDTP, LU-CSC
It is well established that abstract syntactic priming effects, the repetition of syntactic structures but not lexical items across utterances, reflect speakers stored representations of grammar. Therefore, syntactic priming studies provide a powerful tool for studying the nature of speakers' representations - by varying the form and presentation of structures, we can observe where priming effects occur and make inferences about the representations involved. As such, we can use these studies to understand when L2 learners acquire abstract vs lexically-restricted representations of structure. We can also use these to explore the form of those developing representations - do learners have interlanguage variations in structures and when do their representations become nativelike? Projects could explore these effects in speakers' comprehension or production using L2 learners studying at the University or from further afield.
Supervisor: Dr Padraic Monaghan and Dr Patrick Rebuschat (Linguistics)
Research community: Cognitive
Contact: p.monaghan@lancaster.ac.uk
Relevant funding opportunities: Faculty Studentship, NWSSDTP, LU-CSC
Languages of the world vary in all sorts of (interesting) ways. In our "Lancaster Language Learning Lab" we have been investigating how people can acquire vocabulary and grammatical structure of languages in an experimental paradigm where complicated languages can be learned quickly. We are interested in supervising PhD students that would take this paradigm to test how different language structures across the world's languages might affect learning - both in terms of their overall ease or difficulty of learning, and also in terms of transfer effects from one language to another. We are also interested in relating language learning performance to individual differences in broad cognitive mechanisms involved in learning.
https://www.lancaster.ac.uk/language-learning/
Supervisor: Dr Padraic Monaghan and Dr Sana Hannan (Biology and Life Sciences)
Research community: Cognitive
Contact: p.monaghan@lancaster.ac.uk
Relevant funding opportunities: Faculty Studentship, NWSSDTP, LU-CSC
We know that sleep has a profound effect on cognitive processing. Projects in this area will investigate how sleep affects learning and memory, particularly with respect to language learning. Studies will involve measuring sleep using non-invasive techniques such as actigraphy, and relating these sleep measures to cognitive performance, coupled with studies in our sleep lab using PSG to relate sleep stages, spindles, and k-complexes to cognitive change.
Supervisor: Dr Tom Beesley
Research community: Cognitive
Contact: t.beesley@lancaster.ac.uk
Relevant funding opportunities: Faculty Studentship, NWSSDTP, LU-CSC
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/decisions
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.
https://wp.lancs.ac.uk/tombeesley/publications/
Supervisor: Dr Tom Beesley
Research community: Cognitive
Contact: t.beesley@lancaster.ac.uk
Relevant funding opportunities: Faculty Studentship, NWSSDTP, LU-CSC
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.
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.
Supervisor: Dr Amy Atkinson
Research community: Developmental
Contact: amy.atkinson@lancaster.ac.uk
Relevant funding opportunities: Faculty Studentship, NWSSDTP, LU-CSC
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). In many lab-based working memory tasks, simple stimuli are used, such as coloured squares. However, in the real world, the objects we interact with are often much more complex and have strong semantic knowledge attached to them learned through previous experiences. For example, I know that bananas are [usually] yellow, and grass is [usually] green. How do these associations influence working memory? Existing research has started to answer this question in adults. This has suggested that information from long-term memory enters working memory only when it is helpful (e.g. Oberauer et al., 2017).
Our research has begun to examine this in children, but this project would enable a PhD student to examine this question in much more depth. For example, it would be possible to investigate how interactions between long-term memory and working memory change across development from early children to adulthood. Research could also examine whether developmental changes are affected by various factors (e.g. how well learned the information is). A range of behavioural tasks could be used. There may also be the potential for other methodologies to be employed (e.g. eye-tracking) to examine developmental changes in how participants approach the tasks.
These findings will advance our understanding of how working memory develops during childhood. It may also have practical implications in the classroom, where children frequently encounter new information that builds on existing knowledge.
Oberauer, K., Awh, E., & Sutterer, D. W. (2017). The role of long-term memory in a test of visual working memory: Proactive facilitation but no proactive interference. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 43(1), 1.
Sobrinho, N. D., & Souza, A. S. (2023). The interplay of long-term memory and working memory: When does object-colour prior knowledge affect color visual working memory? Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 49(2), 236.
Hart, R., Logie, R. H., & Nicholls, L. A. B. (2024). EXPRESS: Towards theoretically understanding how long-term memory semantics can support working memory performance. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 17470218241284414.
We have some currently unpublished findings in children we would also be able to discuss.
Supervisor: Dr Amy Atkinson
Research community: Developmental
Contact: amy.atkinson@lancaster.ac.uk
Relevant funding opportunities: Faculty Studentship, NWSSDTP, LU-CSC
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 classroom activities, including following instructions, reading comprehension and mental arithmetic. Whilst the role of working memory has been studied considerably during the formal school years, relatively little research has examined how working memory operates in the early years (e.g. the Reception school year or earlier). This project would offer an exciting opportunity to investigate this. A number of questions could be explored including the extent to which working memory relates to outcomes at the end of the early years. Research could also be conducted to examine what techniques early year educators use to support working memory. Research could also examine whether approaches that have been shown to enhance working memory performance later in childhood are effective in the early years.
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.
Atkinson, A. L., Allen, R. J., & Waterman, A. H. (2021). Exploring the understanding and experience of working memory in teaching professionals: A large-sample questionnaire study. Teaching and Teacher Education, 103, 103343.
Gathercole, S. E., Pickering, S. J., Knight, C., & Stegmann, Z. (2004). Working memory skills and educational attainment: Evidence from national curriculum assessments at 7 and 14 years of age. Applied Cognitive Psychology: The Official Journal of the Society for Applied Research in Memory and Cognition, 18(1), 1-16.
Waterman, A. H., Atkinson, A. L., Aslam, S. S., Holmes, J., Jaroslawska, A., & Allen, R. J. (2017). Do actions speak louder than words? Examining children’s ability to follow instructions. Memory & Cognition, 45, 877-890.
Supervisor: Dr Margriet Groen
Research community: Developmental
Contact: m.groen@lancaster.ac.uk
Relevant funding opportunities: Faculty Studentship, NWSSDTP, LU-CSC
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.
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.
Supervisor: Dr Gert Westermann
Research community: Developmental
Contact: g.westermann@lancaster.ac.uk
Relevant funding opportunities: Faculty Studentship, NWSSDTP, LU-CSC
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 interaction 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 semantic networks 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.
Altmann, E., Bazhydai, M., & Westermann, G. (2024). Curious Choices: Infants’ moment-to-moment information sampling is driven by their exploration history. Cognition, 254, 105976. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2024.105976
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.
Supervisor: Dr Gert Westermann
Research community: Developmental
Contact: g.westermann@lancaster.ac.uk
Relevant funding opportunities: Faculty Studentship, NWSSDTP, LU-CSC
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.
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
Supervisor: Dr Gert Westermann (Psychology); Dr Hossein Rahmani (Computing)
Research community: Developmental
Contact: g.westermann@lancaster.ac.uk
Relevant funding opportunities: Faculty Studentship, NWSSDTP, EPSRC, LU-CSC
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.
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
Supervisor: Dr Kate Cain
Research community: Developmental
Contact: k.cain@lancaster.ac.uk
Relevant funding opportunities: Faculty Studentship, NWSSDTP, EPSRC, LU-CSC
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 ongoing 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).
Cain, K., Currie, N. K., Francey, G., Davies, R., Gray, S., Bridges, M. S., Restrepo, M. A., Thompson, & M. S., Ciraolo, M. F. (in press). The influence of reader and text characteristics on sixth graders’ inference making. Journal of Research in Reading.
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.
Supervisor: Dr Kate Cain (and also one of my collaborators in DSI if a big data project)
Research community: Developmental
Contact: k.cain@lancaster.ac.uk
Relevant funding opportunities: Faculty Studentship, NWSSDTP, EPSRC, LU-CSC
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.
There is scope for either a lab-based PhD, where you take a systematic approach to one or more of these potential moderators in young learners OR a data analytic approach, where you work with a dataset from one of my industry partners to examine interactions with digital reading apps.
Details of our 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) that might inform lab-based studies is: 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.
Recent papers where we've analysed big datasets to examine engagement with digital reading apps are:Ma, Y., Cain, K., & Ushakova, A. (2024). Application of cluster analysis to identify different reader groups through their engagement with a digital reading supplement. Computers and Education, 214, 105025.
Diprossimo, L., Ushakova, A., Zoski, J., Gamble, H. Irey, R., & Cain, K. (2023). The use and impact of vocabulary scaffolding features in a digital reading supplement for children: Insights from a big data approach. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 73, 102165.
See also my website, for recent publications on digital and related topics: https://www.lancaster.ac.uk/psychology/about-us/people/kate-cain
Supervisor: Dr Kate Messenger, co-supervisors could be from Psychology or Linguistics at Lancaster
Research community: Developmental
Contact: K.Messenger@lancaster.ac.uk
Relevant funding opportunities: Faculty Studentship, NWSSDTP, LU-CSC
This project will explore models of syntactic priming which invoke prediction error-based implicit learning mechanisms for language acquisition (Dell & Chang, 2014). We know that children can learn how to describe events with different sentence forms from immediate experiences of syntactic structures but the mechanisms underlying how children learn in this kind of context remain a mystery. In particular, extending research in this area, which has mostly relied on production studies, to comprehension measures would allow different questions to be addressed. There is considerable scope to extend existing research to different structures, languages and age groups as well to explore the universality of such mechanisms as well as to refine our understanding of them.
Dell, G.S., & Chang, F. (2014). The P-chain: Relating sentence production and its disorders to comprehension and acquisition. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 9;369(1634):20120394. doi: 10.1098/rstb.2012.0394.
See also chapters within: Messenger, K. (Ed). (2022). Syntactic priming in language development: Representations, mechanisms and applications. Trends in Language Acquisition Research series, 31. John Benjamins. https://benjamins.com/catalog/tilar.31 (email Kate for help accessing chapters).
Supervisor: Dr Marina Bazhydai
Research community: Developmental
Contact: m.bazhydai@lancaster.ac.uk
Relevant funding opportunities: Faculty Studentship, NWSSDTP, LU-CSC
This project would investigate the intricate relationship between curiosity and creativity using longitudinal or 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 psychological links between curiosity and creativity, the project has a potential to make substantial methodological advances to the field of research on both curiosity and creativity.
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.
Ivancovsky, T., Baror, S., & Bar, M. (2024). A shared novelty-seeking basis for creativity and curiosity. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 47, e89
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.
Vaisarova, J., Saguid, L., Kupfer, A. S., Goldbaum, H. S., & Lucca, K. (2024). Exploring the creativity-curiosity link in early childhood. Journal of Creativity, 34(3), 100090.
Supervisor: Dr Marina Bazhydai
Research community: Developmental
Contact: m.bazhydai@lancaster.ac.uk
Relevant funding opportunities: Faculty Studentship, NWSSDTP, LU-CSC
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 informants themselves 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.
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
Gweon, H. (2021). Cognitive foundations of distinctively human social learning and teaching. Trends in Cognitive Sciences. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/8n34t
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
Qiu, F. W., Park, J., Vite, A., Patall, E., & Moll, H. (2024). Children's Selective Teaching and Informing: A Meta‐Analysis. Developmental Science, e13576. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/desc.13576
Supervisor: Dr Marina Bazhydai
Research community: Developmental
Contact: m.bazhydai@lancaster.ac.uk
Relevant funding opportunities: Faculty Studentship, NWSSDTP, LU-CSC
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 under-explored. 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.
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
Qiu, F. W., Park, J., Vite, A., Patall, E., & Moll, H. (2024). Children's Selective Teaching and Informing: A Meta‐Analysis. Developmental Science, e13576. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/desc.13576
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. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31433880/
Supervisor: Dr Alice Milne, Dr Helen Nuthall
Research community: Neuroscience
Contact: a.milne1@lancaster.ac.uk
Relevant funding opportunities: Faculty Studentship, NWSSDTP, EPSRC, LU-CSC
Our environments are full of predictable information, and our brains are experts at exploiting that information. Imagine you are sitting on a train—how does the background noise of the train on the track affect you? One theory is that stable, predictable sensory information can signal that your environment is constant and therefore safe. As a result, it does not need to be closely monitored, and you can divert your attention and cognitive effort to other tasks. Neuromodulators such as dopamine, acetylcholine, and noradrenaline (also called norepinephrine) play a crucial role in this process. The systems that support these neurochemicals are known to be affected in attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Evidence suggests that in ADHD, white or pink background noise improve task performance (Nigg et al., 2024; Soderlun, Sikstrom & Smart, 2007). However, the mechanism behind this remains unclear (Rijmen & Wiersema, 2024). Using pupillometry, electroencephalography (EEG), and possibly brain stimulation, this PhD seeks to understand how predictable information processing is affected in ADHD and how this may explain the therapeutic benefits of certain types of background noise. Specifically, the project will probe interactions between cognitive effort, predictability, background noise and ADHD (via pupillometry, using methods from Milne et al. 2021). Drawing on a range of EEG methodologies, the PhD will also test the influence of these factors on neural markers of ongoing auditory processing and how they are altered in ADHD. The outcomes will improve our understanding of the underlying neural differences in ADHD and potential therapeutic outcomes.
Milne et al. (2021). Journal of Neuroscience, 41(28).
Nigg et al. (2024). Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry.
Rijmen & Wiersema, (2024). Neuropsychologia, 202.
Söderlund, Sikström, & Smart (2007) Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 48(8).
https://sites.google.com/view/alicemilneneuro
https://www.lancaster.ac.uk/psychology/about-us/people/alice-milne
https://www.lancaster.ac.uk/psychology/about-us/people/helen-nuttall
Supervisor: Dr Bo Yao
Research community: Neuroscience
Contact: b.yao1@lancaster.ac.uk
Relevant funding opportunities: Faculty Studentship, NWSSDTP, EPSRC, LU-CSC
Project NICE explores the spectrum of human neurocognitive diversity, focusing on individual differences in inner speech, specifically targeting two phenotypes: Aphantasia (the inability to voluntarily create mental images) and Anendophasia (the absence of inner speech).
Our recent research has revealed two neural mechanisms supporting varieties of inner speech: a motor mechanism (inner speaking) and an imagery mechanism (inner hearing). While inner speaking appears crucial for self-reflection, planning, and internal monologue, inner hearing seems to play a more vital role in supporting internal dialogue involving others' voices and in emotional and behavioural self-regulation.
We aim to understand how individuals with Aphantasia and Anendophasia experience inner speech (or the lack thereof) across task conditions. Those with Aphantasia may struggle with inner speech involving others' voices, while individuals with Anendophasia might rely more on mental imagery for active inference. These individual differences significantly impact how minds interface with the world and construct a sense of self.
Our methodology combines cognitive assessments, neurophysiology, and real-world experience sampling. We're developing objective cognitive assessments and neurophysiological measures to characterise the brain's motor and imagery mechanisms, going beyond subjective questionnaire reports, to investigate their contributions to inner speech across diverse populations.
Project NICE promises to enrich our understanding of consciousness and pave the way for more inclusive and effective approaches in various fields. We anticipate developing a comprehensive model of inner speech diversity and gaining crucial insights into the relationship between inner speech, mental imagery, and cognitive functioning. These findings will have far-reaching implications, from personalising educational strategies and mental health interventions to informing the design of more inclusive AI systems and human-computer interfaces. Moreover, our research will contribute to ongoing philosophical debates about the nature of consciousness and self-awareness, potentially reshaping our understanding of what it means to be human in all its diverse cognitive expressions.
https://lisn-lab.org/
Supervisor: Professor Jason Braithwaite
Research community: Neuroscience
Contact: j.j.braithwaite@lancaster.ac.uk
Relevant funding opportunities: Faculty Studentship, NWSSDTP, LU-CSC
Projects are available that examine the underlying neurocognitive correlates of anomalous / aberrant experiences (including hallucinations and sensory anomalies) in the neurotypical population and individuals assessed for predisposition to certain experiences such as Depersonalization and Migraine. Factors such as cortical hyperexcitability, emotional dysregulation / autonomic processing are a particular current focus. These projects fall under the umbrella notion of consciousness and self-consciousness and disorders.
Key concepts to search are:
Cortical hyperexcitability (and its relationship to anomalous perceptions)
Hallucinations in the general population
Depersonalization disorder
Migraine with aura
Predictive-coding (and multisensory integration)
Methods can include: Multi-channel transcranial direct-current brain stimulation, Electrodermal activity / skin conductance responses, Computer-based experiments, Psychological ratings of stimuli, trait-based measures of predisposition to aberrant experience.
{Please see my Staff page for a list of publications in these areas}
Supervisor: Dr Helen Nuttall and Dr Sana Hannan (BLS)
Research community: Neuroscience
Contact: h.nuttall1@lancaster.ac.uk
Relevant funding opportunities: Faculty Studentship, NWSSDTP, EPSRC, LU-CSC
This PhD project explores the impact of sleep and sleep architecture on cognitive recovery in individuals with age-related hearing loss. Age-related hearing loss causes a reduced auditory signal to be sent to the brain. The means that, particularly in noisy environments such as a café or restaurant, adults with age-related hearing loss experience high cognitive load as they try to follow conversations. As a result, increased listening effort is required to understand speech, which can lead to cognitive depletion. This depletion may then impair attention, memory, and executive function, limiting older adults' capacity to engage socially and impacting their quality of life. Sleep plays a critical role in cognitive restoration, with specific sleep stages involved in memory consolidation, emotional regulation, and synaptic recovery. Slow-wave sleep (deep sleep) and REM (rapid eye movement) sleep are especially important for clearing metabolic waste from the brain and reinforcing neural pathways involved in learning and memory. This project will explore the role of sleep in restoring cognitive function and ameliorating the cognitive depletion that can result from effortful listening in noisy environments. By assessing sleep architecture and cognitive performance in individuals with age-related hearing loss, this study aims to clarify the restorative functions of sleep for cognition in ageing. Understanding the role of sleep in cognitive recovery could also inform recommendations for hearing and sleep health, helping older adults maintain cognitive function and social engagement. The project will combine cutting-edge behavioural and neurophysiological methods – including EEG, sleep recordings and neuromodulation – through an interdisciplinary collaboration between Psychology and Biomedical and Life Sciences.
https://wp.lancs.ac.uk/nosalab/
Supervisor: Dr David Neequaye
Research community: Social
Contact: d.neequaye@lancaster.ac.uk
Relevant funding opportunities: Faculty Studentship, NWSSDTP, LU-CSC
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.
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
Supervisor: Dr Lara Warmelink; Dr David Neequaye
Research community: Social
Contact: l.warmelink@lancaster.ac.uk
Relevant funding opportunities: Faculty Studentship, NWSSDTP, LU-CSC
What cognitive skills do people need to lie successfully?Lying convincingly can be a difficult task. We know that people who are credible liars are also better at other cognitive tasks that require mental flexibility, such as episodic future thinking (O’Connell et al., 2022) and counterfactual thinking (Briazu et al., 2017). We also know that working memory is associated with both lying and lie detection (Maldonado et al., 2018). However, we know very little about other cognitive skills that people rely on to tell lies successfully.This PhD would study one or more cognitive skills that may contribute to successful lying. The skills that are studied could include: working and autobiographical memory, mental time travel, inhibition, task switching, language proficiency, emotion recognition, and/or visual imagination. How many and which skills are studied would be decided by the applicant in collaboration with the supervisors as the proposal is developed. We welcome ideas by the applicant. The aim of the PhD would be to find associations between different skills and to attempt to establish which skills are most important for successful lying.The PhD would consist of several studies, which could each be centred on a different skill or could combine the study of different skills in different ways. Regardless of the skills that are included in the PhD, there will be studies looking at lie generation and at lie detection. This project will be supervised by Dr Lara Warmelink and Dr David Neequaye.
https://www.lancaster.ac.uk/security-lancaster/people/lara-warmelinkhttps://www.lancaster.ac.uk/psychology/about-us/people/david-neequaye
