Lecturer in the School of Psychology, Queen's University Belfast
I have a background in the development of reasoning skills in typical development and in special populations (in autism, and in developmental dyscalculia). I am particularly interested in reasoning heuristics, probabilistic reasoning, analogical reasoning, and how reasoning skills can be improved through training. Another line of my research concerns mathematical abilities and mathematical anxiety. I am also interested in how affective states influence reasoning and maths abilities, as well as people’s decisions, and how reasoning and maths skills can be improved by training.
My work has been funded by grants from the ESRC, the Nuffield Foundation (see details here: http://www.nuffieldfoundation.org/developmental-dyscalculia-and-order-processing), the Royal Society, the British Academy, and the Higher Education Academy Psychology Network. As a PhD student, I received a study visit grant from the EPS, and an award for outstanding student paper from the Cognitive Science Society.
I am involved in both undergraduate and postgraduate teaching. At undergraduate level I am module coordinator for Psy1002 (Introductory psychology), and I am involved in level 1 statistics teaching. I am also module coordinator for Psy3099 (Childhood adversity), and my lectures cover adolescent risk taking and children in care. At postgraduate level I am involved in the MSc course in Atypical development, and I lecture on autism, developmental dyscalculia and mathematical development. I supervise dissertations at BSc and MSc levels. I am also the primary supervisor of two PhD students: Jayne Hamilton and Patrick O'Connor.
I am a member of the ESRC Peer Review College, and a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.
Dyscalculia: does your child struggle with numbers? They might have 'maths dyslexia'
Jan 27, 2019 14:44 pm UTC| Life Health
Youve probably heard of dyslexia, but have you heard of dyscalculia before? Maybe not, given that children with dyscalculia or mathematical learning difficulties are less likely to be diagnosed. In fact, research...
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