Psychology at Lancaster University

Research Interests

My research focuses on various developmental aspects of social perception and cognition, namely: (1) The perception of human action; (2) The perception of biological motion; (3) Methodology. I use a number of techniques in order to investigate these issues, including EEG/ERP, behavioural paradigms and interventions.

Human Action

Understanding others’ action sequences is fundamental for perceiving complex aspects of human movement, such as detecting goal directed behavior and intentional actions. Perceiving these aspects of human behaviour is necessary for abilities that are essential for human cultural skills, such as imitation and language learning. The neural basis of action processing as seen in the adult brain raises some fascinating questions for developmental psychologists.

Biological Motion

How does the identification of conspecifics change within the first postnatal year? Identifying others of the same species is a foundational skill that is required for further increments in social-cognitive abilities. One fundamental topic in the developmental sciences must therefore be how human infants, with limited experience, nonetheless discriminate various forms of motion. It is an area ripe for the examination of the role of experience in such cognitive skills.

Methodology 

As psychologists, we often use very precise and complex devices to assess elements of human behaviour or brain activity.  As a developmental psychologist, it has become increasingly clear to me that many of the techniques that we use are co-opted from adult research, despite the fact that this has implications which have not been fully considered. A recent theme of my publications has been to explore elements of the methods that are regularly used and to understand how infant populations have specific characteristics that impact on obtained results.

Research Grants

 2012: Action research: Improving understanding and methodology in early development. Marie Curie ITN network coordinator (£520596.26 from European Commission). For details, see www.eu-act.org

 2011: The provision of infant EEG editing and analysis software (£72128.99 from ESRC)

 2009: Exploration of links between action perception and action production (£78578.06 from ESRC)

Current Students

Research students currently supervised by Vincent Reid include:

• 
  Aine Ni Choisdealbha
  Marie Curie Early Stage Researcher
  Email Hidden
• 
  Katharina Kaduk
  Marie Curie Early Stage Researcher
  Email Hidden