Primary research interests
I'm interested in how sociocultural factors, such as group structure and the perception of others, affect the transmission, maintenance, and complexity of socially-acquired behaviours, including communication systems, social conventions, and technological tools. I also aim to help identify the mechanisms which underpin cumulative culture in humans, and determine what capacity other species have for developing it.
I also focus on the more immediate practical applications of social learning research, including how group processes can inform public health policy in the context of COVID-19.
Bio
I joined Heriot-Watt University in 2023.
Prior to this, I worked as User Researcher in the Social Security Directorate at the Scottish Government earlier in 2023 and as Lecturer in Psychology at the University of Stirling for the Autumn semester of 2022.
I was at the University of St Andrews from 2020-22, working on the ESRC-funded "Facilitating the public response to COVID-19 by harnessing group processes" project. My primary role involved running experiments to investigate the role of social identity processes in adopting and adhering to COVID-19 preventative measures. I also studied the social psychology of crowd flight in response to perceived hostile threats.
Before that I spent 5 years working on the ERC-funded Ratchetcog Project at the University of Stirling, where I designed, coded, and tested computer-based experiments for children and non-human primates. I also ran developmental studies, and individual and group experiments with adult populations.
I completed my PhD in the Centre for Language Evolution at the University of Edinburgh in 2016. My thesis, Sociocultural determination of linguistic complexity, is available here.
I also have Masters degrees in Linguistics (University of Leeds) and Maths (University of Sheffield).
A more detailed CV is available here.
Journal articles
Atkinson, M., Neville, F., Ntontis, E., Reicher, S. (2024). Social identification and risk dynamics: how perceptions of (inter)personal and collective risk impact the adoption of COVID-19 preventative behaviours. Risk Analysis, 44(2):322-332.
Atkinson, M., Ntontis, E., Neville, F., Reicher, S. (2023). "I'll wait for the English one": COVID-19 vaccine country of origin, national identity, and their effects on vaccine perceptions and uptake willingness. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 17(10): e12837.
Kean, D., Renner, E., Atkinson, M., Caldwell, C.A. (2023). Capuchin monkeys learn to use information equally well from individual exploration and social demonstration. Animal Cognition, 26:435-450.
Wilks, C.E.H., Atkinson, M., Caldwell, C.A. (2022). Children's Use of Social Information from Multiple Models: Cognitive Capacities Underlying Population Size Effects on Cumulative Culture. Culture and Evolution, 19(1):2-21.
Blakey, K.H., Renner, E., Rafetseder, E., Atkinson, M., Caldwell, C.A. (2022). Children transition from simple associations to explicitly reasoned social learning strategies between age four and eight. Scientific Reports, 12: 5045.
Dunstone, J., Atkinson, M., Renner, E., Caldwell, C.A. (2022). Restricted Access to Working Memory Does Not Prevent Cumulative Score Improvement in a Cultural Evolution Task. Entropy, 24(3): 325.
Blakey, K.H., Atkinson, M., Rafetseder, E., Renner, E., Caldwell, C.A. (2022). Taking account of others' goals in social information use: Developmental changes in 3- to 7-year-old children. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 105325.
Atkinson, M., Renner, E., Thompson, B., Mackintosh, G., Xie, D., Su, Y., Caldwell, C.A. (2021). Robust, source-independent biases in children's use of socially and individually acquired information. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 150(4): 778-791. [postprint link]
Blakey, K.H., Rafetseder, E., Atkinson, M., Renner, E., Cowan-Forsythe, F., Sati, S., Caldwell, C.A. (2021). Development of strategic social information seeking: Implications for cumulative culture. PLOS ONE, 16(8): e0256605.
Dunstone, J., Atkinson, M., Grainger, C., Renner, E., Caldwell, C.A. (2021). Limited evidence for executive function load impairing selective copying in a win-stay lose-shift task . PLOS ONE, 16(3): e0247183 .
Renner, E., Kean, D., Atkinson, M., Caldwell, C.A. (2021). The use of individual, social, and animated cue information by capuchin monkeys and children in a touchscreen task. Scientific Reports, 11: 1043.
Wilks, C.E.H., Rafetseder, E., Renner, E., Atkinson, M., Caldwell, C.A. (2021). Cognitive Prerequisites for Cumulative Culture are Context-Dependent: Children’s Potential for Ratcheting Depends on Cue Longevity. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 204: 105031.
Atkinson, M., Blakey, K.H., Caldwell, C.A. (2020). Inferring behaviour from partial social information plays little or no role in the cultural transmission of adaptive traits. Cognitive Science, 44(10): e12903.
Caldwell, C.A., Atkinson, M., Blakey, K.H., Dunstone, J., Kean, D., Mackintosh, G., Renner, E., Wilks, C.E.H. (2020). Experimental assessment of capacities for cumulative culture: Review and evalution of methods. WIREs Cognitive Science, 11:e1516.
Atkinson, M., Mills, G.J., Smith, K. (2019). Social group effects on the emergence of communicative conventions and language complexity. Journal of Language Evolution, 4(1): 1-18.
Renner, E., Atkinson, M., Caldwell, C. A. (2019). Squirrel monkey responses to information from social demonstration and individual exploration using touchscreen and object tasks. PeerJ, 7:e7960.
Atkinson, M., Smith, K., Kirby, S. (2018). Adult learning and language simplification. Cognitive Science, 42, 2818-2854.
Caldwell, C. A., Renner, E., Atkinson, M. (2018). Human Teaching and Cumulative Cultural Evolution. Review of Philosophy and Psychology, 9(4):751-770.
Caldwell, C. A., Atkinson, M., Renner, E. (2016). Experimental Approaches to Studying Cumulative Cultural Evolution. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 25(3), 191-195.
Atkinson, M., Kirby, S., Smith, K. (2015). Speaker input variability does not explain why larger populations have simpler languages. PLOS ONE, 10(6): e0129463.
Commentaries
Caldwell, C.A., Renner, E., Kean, D., Blakey, K.H., Wilks, C.E.H., Atkinson, M., Kraemer, S., Mackintosh, G. (2021). Human Culture Is Cumulative, but Cumulative Cultural Evolution Will Not Be Evident in All Contexts [Comment on Is Human Culture Cumulative? Vaesen, K., Houkes, W.]. Current Anthropology, 62(2).
Encyclopedia articles
Atkinson, M., Smith, K. (2015). Language Development: Evolutionary Theories. In: James D. Wright (editor-in-chief). International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences, 2nd edition, Vol 13. Oxford: Elsevier. pp. 319-323.
