Emotional Processing

Professor Roger Baker works with BU and with the Dorset NHS Trust.  His research examines the way we deal with emotional events in our everyday lives.  He also specialises in panic disorders and post-traumatic stress disorders and individual differences in emotional processing.  For further information please see the Emotional Processing Network website.

Glen Howells’ doctoral research examines individual differences in emotional processing and their link to memory and attention in collaboration with Roger Baker and Siné McDougall.

Sleep and Psychopathology

Dr Andrew Mayers has been conducting research into the relationship between sleep and mental illness. This research focuses on subjective perceptions in depression and anxiety. It explores the negative biases found in these perceptions. This research has also explored the effect that antidepressants have on sleep, and how they make sleep worse for the depressed patient, which may contribute to relapse.

Maternal Mental Illness

Dr Andrew Mayers has been involved in research examining the effect of postnatal depression and postnatal psychosis on a range of factors affecting the mother and child. Some of this explores how poor sleep in the postpartum period might contribute to PND. Other research investigates the relationship between severely mentally ill mothers and their child. Current research is exploring the long term effect of maternal mental illness on the child’s development.

The Brain & Affective Judgements

Recent research by Dr Ben Parris and his colleagues has used fMRI to map the neural processing mechanisms involved in affective judgements and decision making. 

He is currently examining the neural mechanisms of reward.

Aesthetic Judgements – Why Do I Like It?

Professor Siné McDougall is currently examining the cognitive processing underpinning webpage and interface preferences with Irene Reppa from Swansea University.  She is also working with Dr Bob Eves and Frank McClean to examine how individual differences affect the drawings we produce and their aesthetic appeal to others.

Social Networking on the Internet

Dr Jacqui Taylor is working with Dr S Morgan (Kingston) to investigate emotional well-being in students, especially with regard to their use of ICT and social networking.

Emotions on the Face

Dr David Heathcote is currently conducting research examining the effects of emotional facial expression and participant affective state on the retention of feature conjunctions in face memory.  This research has already generated interesting results and has a range of potential applications.  Dr Heathcote has also been involved in research exploring the effects of affective state on immunological responses to long term viral infections.

Mean or Green? Values, Morality and Environmental Behaviour

Dr Judith de Groot is involved in EU funded projects examining prosocial behaviour in relation to environmental issues.  Research funded by the EU has also examined transport planning and quality of life.

Restorative Environments

Dr Paul Stevens is currently receiving funding from the Bial Foundation, looking at how humans respond to fractal patterns in nature. He is also collaborating with Dr Chris Little of HSC and the Cherry Tree Nursery, part of the Sheltered Work Opportunities Project, to further explore factors involved in psychological restoration.

Attention

Dr Ben Parris is involved in research examining the cognitive and neural mechanisms of selective attention and goal-oriented behaviour. He employs methods such as fMRI and hypnosis to investigate these mechanisms. He is also involved in research on Prosopagnosia.

Dr David Heathcote is examining the functional organisation of short-term visual memory looking at the effects of spatial and verbal interference on object memory.  His research also explores the role of working memory in cognitively demanding activities including air traffic control, human-computer interaction, mental arithmetic and driver behaviour.  Dr Heathcote has been involved in research projects funded by National Air Traffic Services (NATS), Jaguar-Ford and the Advanced Interfaces Research Centre

Professor Siné McDougall is involved in work examining how our ability to search visually for road signs is affected by time of day.  Findings suggest that searching for signs is poorest in the early afternoon, i.e. the post-lunch dip.

Dr Jan Wiener is examining the control of visual attention in the context of wayfinding. The combination of virtual environments and eye-tracking techniques allows investigating gaze behaviour during active navigation. Current research focuses on spatial decision making and landmark selection.

Cognitive Skills

Dr Simon Thompson & Dr Ben Parris are involved in research examining research examining behavioural control in dementia and other clinical disorders.

Professor Siné McDougall is involved in research examining the cognitive skills underpinning human-computer interaction.

Spatial Cognition

Dr Jan Wiener investigates cognitive and neural mechanisms involved in orientation, spatial memory, and wayfinding. Particular interest concerns the strategies applied and the information processed when solving different spatial tasks (e.g., exploration, route learning, path planning). To approach these questions, Wiener employs methods such as eye-tracking, virtual reality, cognitive modelling, and fMRI.

Autism – Pretence, Language & Memory

The enigma of autism has enthralled researchers since the 18th century. Research carried out by Dr Sally Bigham has examined language learning and memory in autistic children.  She is currently collaborating with Professor Gill Boucher and Andrew Mayes.

Reading and Dyslexia

The ease with which we learn to read and the skills we need depend on the written form of the language we are reading.  There are over 400 writing systems in existence.  A book edited by Nicola Brunswick, Siné McDougall and Paul de Mornay-Davies examines up-to-the-minute research on reading and dyslexia in different writing systems.

In conjunction with Dr Nicki Holmes in Poole LEA, we are examining how effective ‘precision teaching’, a form of rehearsal and repetition of words, is in helping those with reading difficulties.

Widening Participation

Dr Jacqui Taylor and Becky House have been examining the role of self-confidence and identity in students’ undergraduate success in students from non-traditional backgrounds. The findings have been interpreted in terms of social identity theory.

Silver Surfers

Dr Jacqui Taylor and Becky House are supervising the doctoral research of Urszula Frackiewicz investigating online support networks for the elderly.

Dr Taylor is also working with Prof Steven Ersser and Andy Pulman investigating online support networks for chronically ill patients.

Brain Training – Does it Keep Your Brain Ticking Over?

Becky House and Siné McDougall are examining the efficacy of commonly available ‘brain training’ in improving the cognitive functioning of older adults.