Cognition

The research of many members of the academic staff is informed by cognitive principles, be it in the clinical, social, or even forensic and organisational domains. After all, Cognition is about how we analyse, integrate, and interpret information, which is relevant to most aspects of human behaviour.

In addition to those whose research has a cognitive foundation, though, there are academics in the school whose research focuses directly on an understanding of cognitive processes themselves. This research includes analyses of memory, thought, language, and decision making, with specialists in each of these areas who have a strong international reputation.

They are widely published and have been very successful in attracting research funding from a number of different sources. It is probably fair to say the School of Psychology has one of the strongest groups of cognitive researchers in Australia.

People Involved

Here is a list of the people within the school who are most involved in cognitive research. Follow the links for further information including full CVs and current projects.

Chris Donkin

Project: Understanding Working Memory
Project: Decision Making: Big and Small
Project: Computational Models of Cognition

Justine Gatt

Project: Neuroscience and Genetics of Resilience

Brett Hayes

Mike Le Pelley

Skye McDonald

Project: The Sociopath Amongst Us: The Neural Basis of Empathy Disorders
Project: Understanding the Dynamics of Conversation

Steven Most

Project: Motivated Attention & Perception

Dani Navarro

Project: How Do People Learn and Reason About the World?
Project: Decision Making in an Uncertain World
Project: Statistical and Computational Models in Psychological Science

Ben Newell

Project: Irrational, Biased or Predictable? How Do We Make Decisions?
Project: The Psychology of Climate Change Communication
Project: Saving for Retirement? If Not, Why Not?

Marcus Taft

Project: Processing the Internal Structure of English Words
Project: Reading in Languages Other Than English
Project: Bilingual Processes
Project: The Relationship Between Lexical and Episodic Memory

In Profile

Associate Professor Eva Kimonis

Research Areas: Developmental psychopathology; child clinical psychology; externalising and conduct problems; aggression and antisocial behaviour; violent offending; development, assessment and treatment of callous-unemotional traits and psychopathy.
Associate Professor Thomas Whitford

Research Areas: Schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders; schizotypy; understanding the psychological and neurophysiological basis of delusions and hallucinations; understanding the basis of sensory suppression to self-generated actions; Event-Related Potentials (ERPs); Diffusion-Tensor Imaging (DTI).
Professor Jessica Grisham

Research Areas: Obsessive-compulsive disorder, hoarding disorder, and related disorders. Comorbidity and classification of anxiety disorders. Investigations into processes that are associated with various types of psychopathology, including emotion regulation and thought suppression.
Dr Jenny Richmond

My research program addresses the development of memory and emotion during infancy and early childhood and takes a developmental cognitive neuroscience approach. I am particularly interested in the development of relational memory and the role it might play in representational flexibility. My recent work has looked at age-related changes in episodic memory and future thinking during early childhood and the development of rapid facial mimicry in infancy.

Ethics and Sona Resources

Please follow the links below for more information and resources on the Research Participation program for staff and graduate students. You should save each document to your network drive (z: drive) and edit it from there to avoid losing changes.