Biography

Education

B.Sc. - University of California San Diego - Cognitive Science Department Honors Thesis: Face recognition in squirrel monkeys as a function of social status and attention using event-related potentials. Published in Cognitive Brain Research

D.Phil. - University of Oxford - Department of Experimental Psychology Examined shifts of attention in vision and language using ERPs, fMRI and PET in collaboration with the Wellcome Functional Imaging Laboratory, UCL and Northwestern University Medical School. Thesis title: Shifting Attention Based on Perceptual or Linguistic Information: Behavioural and Electrophysiological Studies

Role

Lecturer in Psychology (01/01/08 - present)

Department of Psychology

Open University

Research Fellow (01/08/08 - present)

Centre for Brain and Cognitive Development

Birkbeck College, University of London

Multidimensional Investigation of typical preverbal children and children with specific language impairments.

Associate Tutor (01/10/08 - present)

Cognitive Psychology II

Department of Psychology

University of Sussex

Daphne Jackson Research Fellow

University of Sussex (2004-Present) Department of Psychology, School of Life Sciences. Three year post-doctoral grant to study multimodal communication in Western Lowland Gorillas. Gorillas located at Port Lympne Animal Park (John Aspinall Foundation).

Research Background 

Since my undergraduate studies, I have maintained a concentrated research focus on human and non-human primate cognition at both the neural and behavioural levels. My current research centres on building an understanding of the mechanisms that underlie complex communication in non-human primates (specifically, great apes). I have developed a novel method of recording, coding and analysing multimodal behaviours in gorillas as they interact with their social partners and the environment. Drawing from my knowledge of neuroscience and brain processes, I take a distributed approach to social cognition. Primate behaviour can never be analysed as a single isolated event, but rather one that is comprised of a network of interacting sensory signals within a particular social context over space and time. Unlike previous research in the area of primate communication, this approach requires one to consider the coordinated efforts of the entire body as it generates auditory, tactile and visual signals. This research is important both for understanding a unique species of ape as well as for drawing comparisons between apes and humans in an attempt to better understand the evolution of modern human language.

Current Areas of Investigation

• Multidimensional behaviour in gorillas
• Methods and Analyses Structure in multimodal signals
• Simultaneous and sequential signals
  
• Limb laterality in object manipulation and emotive behaviours
• Dynamic behaviour: the role of social context, proximity and timing
• Individuals differences, groups and mother/baby dyads