Blog
Open Science working group
Along with our local UKRN Network lead, Dr Sharon Coen and Dr Robert Bendall, I am co-chair of the University of Salford Open Science working group.
We promote open and reproducible research practice by working to create a community where open research practice is the norm. As part of our activities, we are collaborating with other networks in the North of England, including being part of a joint ReproducibiliTea. ReproducabiliTea is a journal club where we discuss papers and ideas related to the Open Science movement. We are launching this initiative on December 15th with mince pies and festive cheer.
Psychology Research Celebration
In July my psychology department (University of Salford) spent a day celebrating all the great research conducted in the department. I also got an award for my contribution to promoting open science to the department. This came from me and my colleague Dr Rob Bendall giving an open science workshop. Slides are shared below.
EPS 2022
I recently spoke at the January EPS 2022 meeting held virtually.
Talk title: Investigating the influence of joint attention on maintenance in working memory
Video was a back up in case of technical failure!
VWMS 2021
I recently presented work at the VWMS from a project investigating whether the effect of joint attention on working memory can be found in older adult populations.
Video is a back up made in case of tech failure on the day!
I recently presented a poster at the BNA festival of neuroscience (April 2021), a 3 minute slideshow, the abstract and the poster are presented below
Using a simple gaze cuing task, where an onscreen face looks towards or away from an objects eventual location, it has been found that validly cued (looked at) items are processed faster, liked more, and remembered better. It is hypothesised that this gaze cuing effect occurs because the social context afforded by the gaze cue enriches the experience. However, it is currently unclear if these effects can be found in a more realistic environment. Here, we further investigated the influence of another person’s gaze on visual working memory using virtual reality (VR). Realistic human avatars (4 male, 4 female) were presented (individually) sat at a table. The avatars looked to the left or right side of the table and then, after 500ms, items – a bowl, plate, teapot and cup - were presented in either the looked at (valid) or looked away from (invalid) location for 500ms. Participants (n = 49) were told that the cue was not informative and that they were required to remember both the objects’ locations and specific details about each object’s status, e.g., the bowl could be full or empty. After a 1000ms maintenance interval the participants were presented with a single object in a location on the table and had to respond with whether the object had been in this location originally. They then had to answer a question about the status of an object, e.g. was the bowl empty? We also presented the task using a non-social control cue, specifically a moving stick (within subjects), to help understand whether any influence of the person cue was social, or a basic attention cuing effect. EEG was recorded to measure cortical oscillations in the alpha and theta band during item encoding, maintenance and retrieval. Behavioural results analysed using repeated measure AVOVA show that participants were more accurate for the status question when objects were validly cued by both the social gaze cue and the non-social stick cue. EEG results analysed using cluster-based permutations are used to understand the neural mechanism of this finding, with the social avatar uniquely influencing theta-band brain oscillations, indicating that there is something unique about the social cues influence on cognition.
