Find out more about our innovative, self-funded PhD projects in areas of psychology where we already have supervisors active and engaged in the research topic in our School of Psychology and Sport Science.
Brain and Cognition Research Group
Prof Peter Bright (Psychology)
Dr Ian van der Linde (Computing & Information Science)
Neuropsychological Assessment
It is important for clinicians and researchers to be able to estimate a neurological patient's prior (i.e., pre-injury or ‘premorbid’) level of ability, typically their ‘full-scale’ IQ. This information is used to evaluate the impact of neurological damage on cognition, treatment planning and recovery monitoring. Standard tests for measuring IQ cannot be used for this purpose directly since a patient’s cognitive impairment will affect the scores obtained in one or more test components, yielding a full-scale IQ score that describes their current rather than premorbid cognitive ability.
Among several approaches proposed to address this problem evidence suggests that so-called ‘hold tests’ are particularly effective (Bright, Jaldow & Kopelman, 2002; Bright and van der Linde, 2018). Hold tests require evaluation of performance on cognitive functions that are both relatively resistant to neurological damage and known to correlate well with IQ in neurologically healthy participants. The estimated premorbid IQ is then compared with current IQ to judge the impact of the neurological condition on general cognitive ability. Other approaches for estimating premorbid IQ include the use of demographic information alone, or in combination with hold test performance.
The proposed research will focus on the development of alternative/novel approaches to increase the precision of premorbid cognitive ability estimates. We have recently published a promising evolutionary algorithm based approach for optimising the precision of hold test performance (van der Linde & Bright, 2018), and we would expect the successful applicant to extend this work. The overall objective of this research will be to successfully develop and publish new tools to benefit researchers and clinicians involved in the assessment of cognitive impairment following neurological injury, thereby improving (i) the clinical management of patients and (ii) the quality of patient-based academic research.
This project is self-funded.
Details of studentships for which funding is available are selected by a competitive process and are advertised on our jobs website as they become available.
If you wish to be considered for this project, you will need to apply for our Psychology PhD. In the section of the application form entitled 'Outline research proposal', please quote the above title and include a research proposal.
Brain and Cognition Research Group
Cognitive control
Research implicates that the complex process of attending to and producing goal-relevant behaviours is sensitive to variations in psychometric intelligence (Spearman’s general factor or ‘g’; Bright, 1998; Duncan, Emslie, Williams, Johnson, & Freer, 1996). More recently, a series of investigations has indicated that g reflects ability to organize novel information into complex, effective task models (Carroll & Bright, 2016; Duncan, Parr, Woolgar, Thompson, Bright et al., 2008). The observation that it is mental representation of task rules rather than real-time task execution demands that most closely predicts variations in g is an important finding. Our data indicates that g reflects a ‘chunking’ function, in which task relevant information is manipulated towards more efficient representation, thereby reducing storage or attentional demands on working memory (Carroll & Bright, 2016).
On the basis of work carried out to date the following predictions will form the early focus of the proposed PhD work:
These questions will be addressed with an existing paradigm developed by Bright and shown in multiple publications to be highly sensitive to variations in g (Bright, 1998; Duncan et al., 2008; Bandhari & Duncan, 2014; Carroll & Bright, 2016), but there will also be an expectation that the PhD student develops their own paradigm for investigating predictions and further developing theory. Therefore, the student will be expected to develop, run, analyse and interpret results from a coherent body of theoretically motivated experiments in an attempt to reveal individual differences in the ways in which task instructions are initially modelled and then remodelled over the course of preparation for, and execution of, goal-directed complex behaviours.
It is expected that the main body of data will be based on cognitive experimental studies of neurologically healthy participants. However, computational modelling may be required alongside behavioural data for a clearer understanding of how linguistic rules transform into effective conceptualisation of constraints. Contingent upon theoretical importance and direction of earlier findings, it may also be instructive to employ cortical stimulation techniques (transcranial direct current stimulation and/or transcranial magnetic stimulation, both available within the Department of Psychology) to address task modelling and performance from a neurological perspective.
This project is self-funded.
Details of studentships for which funding is available are selected by a competitive process and are advertised on our jobs website as they become available.
If you wish to be considered for this project, you will need to apply for our Psychology PhD. In the section of the application form entitled 'Outline research proposal', please quote the above title and include a research proposal.
Brain and Cognition Research Group
Child Development, Memory and Perception
The term ‘prospective memory’ (PM) refers to the act of remembering to carry out plans at some appropriate time in the future. For example, a child might want to remember to watch their favourite television program when they get home from school (time-based PM) or convey an important message to their mother when they next see her (event-based PM). Despite an impressive rise in the number of investigations of children’s PM over the last 5-10 years, interest in the underlying mechanisms of development has focused almost exclusively on retrieval of PM intentions, supported by maturation of the prefrontal cortex and associated gains in executive functions (EF), with little attention paid to intention formation. Moreover, an over-emphasis on laboratory-based research has meant that we know almost nothing about how children’s PM develops in everyday life.
The primary aim is to chart the development of children’s PM, and the cognitive abilities contributing to PM, in a large-scale cross-sectional study involving time- and event-based tasks that are either laboratory-based or enacted at home. Additionally, children’s PM will be explored as a function of home environment variables.
Participants will be 3- to 7-year-olds. Children will be asked to complete a battery of tasks designed to measure time- and event-based PM, either in the laboratory or at home. Additionally, they will complete a comprehensive range of tests of cognitive ability relevant to intention formation, maintenance and retrieval. Most of the data collection will take place in kindergartens and infants’ schools. Additionally, for a subset of the children, interactions between the child and parent will be video-recorded in the developmental psychology laboratory at Anglia Ruskin University.
This project is self-funded.
Details of studentships for which funding is available are selected by a competitive process and are advertised on our jobs website as they become available.
If you wish to be considered for this project, you will need to apply for our Psychology PhD. In the section of the application form entitled 'Outline research proposal', please quote the above title and include a research proposal.
Brain and Cognition Research Group
Dr Dean D’Souza - (Anglia Ruskin University)
Dr Hana D’Souza - (Cambridge University)
Dr John Lambie - (Anglia Ruskin University)
Action is at the core of early cognitive development. Even young infants actively select aspects of their environment to focus on by moving their eyes and reaching towards people and objects. How is this active embodied learning affected if children have motor difficulties, which are often present early in development across a range of neurodevelopmental disorders? This project aims to investigate how motor behaviours (e.g., handling objects) in infants/toddlers with Down syndrome and Williams syndrome and their parents relate to language development in these young children. The project will be focused on collecting data from these groups using head-mounted eye-tracking, as well as coding and analysing an already existing data-set from a large project on individual differences in infants/toddlers with Down syndrome (the London Down Syndrome Consortium LonDownS).
The research is a joint venture between researchers at Anglia Ruskin University and the University of Cambridge. Testing will take place at the University of Cambridge.
References
D’Souza, D., D’Souza, H. and Karmiloff-Smith, A., 2017. Precursors to language development in typically and atypically developing infants and toddlers: The importance of embracing complexity. Journal of Child Language, 44(3), pp.591-627.
Yu, C. and Smith, L.B., 2012. Embodied attention and word learning by toddlers. Cognition, 125(2), pp.244-262.
Yu, C. and Smith, L.B., 2013. Joint attention without gaze following: Human infants and their parents coordinate visual attention to objects through eye-hand coordination. PLoS ONE, 8(11), e79659.
Samuelson, L.K. and McMurray, B., 2017. What does it take to learn a word?. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Cognitive Science, 8(1-2), e1421.
de Campos, A.C., da Costa, C.S.N., Savelsbergh, G.J. and Rocha, N.A.C.F., 2013. Infants with Down syndrome and their interactions with objects: Development of exploratory actions after reaching onset. Research in Developmental Disabilities, 34(6), pp.1906-1916.
This project is self-funded.
Details of studentships for which funding is available are selected by a competitive process and are advertised on our jobs website as they become available.
If you wish to be considered for this project, you will need to apply for our Psychology PhD. In the section of the application form entitled 'Outline research proposal', please quote the above title and include a research proposal.
Applied, Social and Health Psychology Research group
Consumer Psychology, Gender and Sexualities, Identity and Social Issues, Prejudice and Advertising
This PhD project aims to test novel ways of protecting the audiences against the effects of (e.g. media-based) prejudice (be it sexism, racism, homophobia or ageism). As an example, the omnipresent gender-traditional advertising (Zawisza et al., 2016, 2018; Grau & Zotos, 2016) has been shown to exert numerous negative effects on women (e.g. on their self-esteem, leadership and maths performance, Dimofte et al., 2015; Van Loo & Rydell, 2014) including disengagement from gender threatening market contexts (Lee, Kim & Vohs, 2011). Similar effects may apply to other forms of media based prejudice.
The PhD project will test the concept of power as a useful buffering tool. For example, incidental ‘power-posing’ induced by working on small (iPod Touch) vs. bigger (iMac computer) device led to lower vs. higher assertiveness respectively (Bos & Cuddy, 2013) and slumped sitting led to lower work-related self-confidence than sitting straight up (Briñol, Petty, & Wagner, 2009). Could similar power manipulations literally empower consumers to reach their full economic potential in socially threatening market contexts?
The project will examine if and how power can be employed successfully to protect audiences against prejudice in the marketplace. The project will involve running series of quantitative experimental studies ranging from selection of appropriate stimuli through testing various manipulations of power and their usefulness in neutralizing the negative effects of the stereotypical marketplace situations. Moreover, relevant mediators and moderators will also be investigated.
The aim of the project is to produce practical recommendations for consumers, practitioners and advertising standards agencies alike and has consumers’ well-being at heart. It may form part of a bigger project run by Dr Zawisza in collaboration with Dr Simone Schnall, Cambridge University. Equipment and software such as online experimental testing platforms enabling use of Social Media will be available at ARU.
Interested candidates should come with background in social sciences, marketing and/or advertising, experience in running quantitative research projects (i.e. experiments) and conducting advanced statistical analyses. Interest in experimental social psychology is essential and in consumer psychology desirable.
This project is self-funded.
Details of studentships for which funding is available are selected by a competitive process and are advertised on our jobs website as they become available.
If you wish to be considered for this project, you will need to apply for our Psychology PhD. In the section of the application form entitled 'Outline research proposal', please quote the above title and include a research proposal.
Applied, Social and Health Psychology Research Group
Consumer Psychology, Gender and Sexualities, Identity and Social Issues, Social Perception and Advertising.
This project aims to systematically test a proposed theoretical extension of social perception theories to advertising context (Zawisza & Pittard, 2015, Zawisza, 2016).
Social perception models posit that brands may be perceived as humans (Wojciszke & Abele, 2008; aka the Big Two, Abele & Bruckmüller, 2011). The transference of social perception models over emotions and then behaviours (Cuddy, et al., 2008) makes them promising for predicting consumer behaviour. However, while the models have been applied, though only formally, to the perception of brands (Kervyn et al., 2012) its predictive value for purchase intent in advertising context is limited (Zawisza & Pittard, 2015, Zawisza, 2016).
The PhD project will focus on testing and extending the current social perception models and their applicability to advertising context. The thesis may focus on representation of any social group in advertising (be it gender, race, country of origin, etc.), any product, service or brand categories and any channel of communication (e.g. print media, social media, the Internet) or persuasive communication types (including social advertising focused on attitude change). It will test the utility of social dimensions in determining advertising success.
The project will examine the proposed extension empirically through the use of quantitative experimental research methods. Study 1 will preselect appropriate advertising stimuli. A series of experiments will then follow to test the performance of these stimuli as a function of moderating and mediating variables potentially affecting the resultant purchase intent. These could be various product categories, consumer characteristics, cultures and different types of services.
The aim of the project is to produce impactful practical recommendations for marketing practitioners and advertising standards agencies alike. It may form part of a bigger collaborative project run by Dr Zawisza at Cambridge. Equipment and software such as online experimental testing platforms enabling use of Social Media will be available at ARU.
Interested candidates should come with background in social sciences, marketing and/or advertising, experience in running quantitative research projects (i.e. experiments) and conducting advanced statistical analyses. Interest in experimental social psychology is essential and in consumer psychology desirable.
This project is self-funded.
Details of studentships for which funding is available are selected by a competitive process and are advertised on our jobs website as they become available.
If you wish to be considered for this project, you will need to apply for our Psychology PhD. In the section of the application form entitled 'Outline research proposal', please quote the above title and reference number.
Applied, Social and Health Psychology Research group
Consumer Psychology, Gender and Sexualities, Identity and Social Issues, Social Advertising
This PhD project aims to test novel ways of boosting the effectiveness of social advertising with the aim to change prejudiced attitudes to specific social groups, i.e. people with mental illness, women, sexual or ethnic minorities. For example, research shows that non- traditional female portrayals in advertising are less effective (Zawisza & Cinnirella, 2010), also cross-culturally (Zawisza et al., 2016, 2018), and less frequent (Grau & Zotos, 2016). Yet the more popular gender traditional ads reinforce stereotypes and have numerous negative effects on women (Dimofte et al., 2015; Van Loo & Rydell, 2014). Gender traditional marketing practices could be changed if the non-traditional ads could be made more effective. Design and testing of such boosting techniques is the aim of this project.
The novel ad effectiveness boosting tools will utilise social perception principles as these have been shown to apply to perception of brands (Kervyn, Fiske & Malone, 2012) and ads (Zawisza, 2016). For example, the lesser effectiveness of ads utilising non-traditional female portrayals is attributed to their lower warmth or likeability (Zawisza & Cinnirella, 2010; Zawisza et al., 2016, 2018).
The PhD project will examine if manipulation of relevant social perception dimensions can boost the effectiveness of social advertisements. It will involve a series of quantitative studies ranging from preselecting appropriate stimuli to testing manipulations of relevant dimensions of social perception and their effects on ad effectiveness, brand perception and attitude change. Moreover, relevant mediators and moderators will also be investigated.
The aim of the project is to produce practical recommendations for consumers, practitioners and advertising standards agencies alike and has consumers’ well-being at heart. It may form part of a bigger collaborative project run by Dr Zawisza in Cambridge. Equipment and software such as online experimental testing platforms enabling use of Social Media will be available at ARU.
Interested candidates should come with background in social sciences, marketing and or advertising, experience in running quantitative research projects (i.e. experiments) and conducting advanced statistical analyses. Interest in experimental social psychology is essential and in consumer psychology desirable.
This project is self-funded.
Details of studentships for which funding is available are selected by a competitive process and are advertised on our jobs website as they become available.
If you wish to be considered for this project, you will need to apply for our Psychology PhD. In the section of the application form entitled 'Outline research proposal', please quote the above title and include a research proposal.
Applied, Social and Health Psychology Research Group
Making sensible food choices can be a difficult task for many consumers. The importance of a healthy diet is something that is commonly debated in the media. For a long time researchers have focused on using visual input to guide the decisions people make. However, one factor that has recently gained scholars’ attention, but also plays an important role in creating the impression of food, is texture. Texture is a sensory property and functional manifestation of the structural, mechanical and surface properties of foods detected through the sense of vision, hearing, touch and kinaesthetic (Szczesniak, 2002). Specifically, tactile properties has usually been investigated through texture-taste interactions. However, haptic information, through the hands, can also affect the perception of food and in particular texture (e.g. Barnett-Cowan, 2010). For example, the texture of a plate has been found to affect both taste and mouthfeel ratings of food (Biggs et al., 2016). This coupled with the fact that there are many other studies (e.g. Jansson-Boyd and Patel, 2018; Jansson-Boyd, 2011) that have found tactile input to be of utmost importance when it comes to influencing people’s perception means that touch may also influence how food is evaluated.
The research literature lacks work on how food information received through our hands may influence perceived healthiness of foods. Hence, this is the focal point of this research. The successful candidate will investigate whether textured haptic food information can help guide consumers to evaluate food as being healthy. Furthermore, you will explore if haptically based food cues have an important role to play in the likelihood of consumption.
This project is self-funded.
Details of studentships for which funding is available are selected by a competitive process and are advertised on our jobs website as they become available.
If you wish to be considered for this project, you will need to apply for our Psychology PhD. In the section of the application form entitled 'Outline research proposal', please quote the above title and include a research proposal.
Applied, Social and Health Psychology Research Group
Body Image and Eating Disorders
Negative body image and eating disorders were historically characterised as culture-bound experiences, primarily afflicting women in high-income, industrialized, and Western societies. However, reports of high rates of negative body image and disordered eating globally have changed this perspective. One factor that may increase the risk of negative body image is cultural change (e.g., via transcultural migration). According to this hypothesis, eating disorders are more likely to develop because of the high levels of stress associated with cultural change. However, few studies have directly tested this hypothesis and available data tends to be cross-sectional in nature.
We seek a PhD student with an interest in cross-cultural psychology to advance existing research on the effects of transcultural migration on negative body image and disordered eating. The successful candidate will conduct longitudinal research that seeks to examine the long-term impact that migration across cultures has on symptoms of disordered eating and aspects of body image.
Knowledge and/or experience of longitudinal, quantitative study design is essential, and knowledge of body image and eating disorders across cultural groups is desirable. The candidate will work with the supervisory team to identify suitable samples to recruit, translate and validate measures for use, and examine conduct longitudinal research to examine rates of negative body image and symptoms of disordered eating pre- and post-migration. The candidate will also evaluate culture-specific factors that may promote or protect individuals from negative body image and disordered eating in migrant groups. For an example of this type of research, see Swami, V., 2016. Change in risk factors for eating disorder symptomatology in Malay students sojourning in the United Kingdom. International Journal of Eating Disorders, 49(7), pp.695-700.
To discuss the project informally prior to application, please contact Prof Viren Swami.
This project is self-funded.
Details of studentships for which funding is available are selected by a competitive process and are advertised on our jobs website as they become available.
If you wish to be considered for this project, you will need to apply for our Psychology PhD. In the section of the application form entitled 'Outline research proposal', please quote the above title and include a research proposal.
Applied, Social and Health Psychology Research Group
Food Choice
A healthy diet is one that includes a balanced range of macro-nutrients: dietary guidelines encourage us to consume plenty of fruits, vegetables, starches, and wholegrains, sufficient low fat meats, fish, eggs, pulses, nuts and dairy and minimal amounts of processed foods that are high in sugar, fat and salt. Some individuals within the UK population do eat such a diet, though few meet all the dietary guidelines and as such most of the population eats a diet that fails to comply with these dietary guidelines, with measurable impact on their health and wellbeing.
This project is aiming to explore individual attitudes to meals that predict poorer dietary composition within the UK population. Meals are a cultural convention, and as such they follow culturally accepted social norms. These norms are a set of informal, maybe implicit rules or expectations that a social group follow when making decisions about what to eat at meals. Some may be national or international in use (meals involve a savoury collection of foods followed by a sweeter collection of foods), while others may be held by subsets of the population (meals must be hot food, or must include meat, a starch and a vegetable). After conducting a scoping review of the literature on meals to identify existing research on this topic, questionnaire and meal preference methodology will be used to elicit meal social norms within a national representative sample of the population. The project will evaluate how widely held meal social norms are and what demographic groups within the population hold the more common meal social norms.
Secondly the project will explore whether subscribing to each of the common social norms offers dietary advantages or disadvantages. For instance, do individuals who follow a norm of “meals must contain a vegetable” consume more vegetables than those who do not follow this norm.
Finally, the project will test a dietary intervention that seeks to promote meal social norm messages, and assess the extent to which these are associated with changes in dietary make-up. This final research will establish to what extent meal social norms have a causal impact on what is eaten and dietary composition, and therefore whether future interventions that promote meal-related social norms are a promising target for behaviour change interventions.
This is cross faculty, interdisciplinary project that will link closely to the Child and Family Health Behaviour Research Group.
This project is self-funded.
Details of studentships for which funding is available are selected by a competitive process and are advertised on our jobs website as they become available.
If you wish to be considered for this project, you will need to apply for our Psychology PhD. In the section of the application form entitled 'Outline research proposal', please quote the above title and include a research proposal.
Applied, Social and Health Psychology Research Group
Dr Debora Antoniotti de Vasconcelos e Sa
The focus of this research is to explore relationships between carers and the people they look after. Specifically, the aim is to investigate if interpersonal touch can be used as a means to create a closer relationship between careers and those they care for. The existing literature predominantly focus on ‘practical’ carers touch, i.e. when touch is used to practically care for patients, such as moving them to change bed sheets, giving medication or alike, rather than what we deem a more positive ‘social’ interpersonal touch. Practically based tactile interaction (such as the aforementioned) is reportedly not viewed in a favourable light by either the carer or the person cared for [Watts, 1998] and may refrain carers from engaging in other more positive tactile interaction.
The use of interpersonal touch could help to improve long-term psychological well-being for the person cared for. The importance of tactile input is evident from a plethora of research showing that it can alter perception [Woods & Diamond, 2002; Peck & Childers, 2003; Jansson-Boyd, 2011] and have an important role to play when it comes to connecting emotionally [Rolls et al., 2003]. The link between touch and emotion may also account for the fact that interpersonal touch has been found to have a strong influence on generating responses to requests. This is particularly notable from a study [Eaton et al., 1986] when staff who worked in a care unit for older people were asked to combine verbal encouragement to eat with interpersonal touch. When doing so the older people ate more and consequently consumed more calories and protein. The effect lasted for several days after tactile contact had taken place.
Currently the research literature lacks work on how the role of interpersonal touch can have a positive impact on the relationship between carers and the people they look after. Thus the proposed research will focus on the development of using interpersonal touch as a means to improve carer - patient relationships.
This project is self-funded.
Details of studentships for which funding is available are selected by a competitive process and are advertised on our jobs website as they become available.
If you wish to be considered for this project, you will need to apply for our Psychology PhD. In the section of the application form entitled 'Outline research proposal', please quote the above title and include a research proposal.
Brain and Cognition Research Group
Background: Maternal behaviour is a critical factor for the optimal emotional and psychosocial development of a child. Increasing evidence from animal studies suggest an epigenetic foundation of maternal behaviour, influenced by environmental as well as biological factors. Oxytocin (OT) is a uniquely mammalian hormone that plays a key role in socio-affiliative processes and it has been shown to be critical in the initiation of maternal behaviour. Pregnancy is a critical period in a woman’s life where profound psychophysiological changes suddenly occur. Such changes are likely underlined by neurohormonal changes, as confirmed by animal studies. What we know so far in humans is that variation in OT levels in pregnancy differentially affects the later caregiving maternal behaviour. However, methodological and technical limitations in testing pregnant women have hampered this line of research from progressing. Moreover, whereas animal studies suggest a direct link between neurohormonal changes in pregnancy and maternal behaviour, the complexity of human beings might suggest the involvement of another component in this interaction, i.e. the cognitive representation of the infant in the mother’s brain.
This leads to the following research question: Do the neurohormonal changes during pregnancy shape subsequent maternal behaviour?
Methods: A longitudinal study we will first assess the participants’ neurohormonal profile during pregnancy. After giving birth the mother’s mental representations of the baby will be measured. Finally an observational session will provide a quantitative measure of the maternal behaviour.
Dr Katarzyna Gajewska-Knapik, Consultant in Obstetrics and Foetal Medicine at Cambridge University Hospital will collaborate on this project. She has collaborated with Dr Cardini and Dr Aspell for a previously funded project on pregnancy. Their collaboration is still ongoing and she has agreed to assist in identifying suitable participants from the patient pool at Addenbrooke’s Hopsital, and help in the organisation of recruitment.
This project is self-funded.
Details of studentships for which funding is available are selected by a competitive process and are advertised on our jobs website as they become available.
If you wish to be considered for this project, you will need to apply for our Psychology PhD. In the section of the application form entitled 'Outline research proposal', please quote the above title and include a research proposal.