Dr Bert Timmermans
Senior Lecturer
- About
-
- Email Address
- bert.timmermans@abdn.ac.uk
- Telephone Number
- +44 (0)1224 273483
- Office Address
- School/Department
- School of Psychology
Biography
- 2019– Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor), University of Aberdeen
- 2013–2019 Lecturer (Assistant Professor), University of Aberdeen
- 2010–2012 Marie Curie / Volkswagen Foundation Fellow, Neuroimaging Group, UHCologne
- 2007–2009 Research Fellow, Consciousness, Cognition & Computation Group, ULBruxelles
- 2006 PhD in Psychology (Social Cognition), Vrije Universiteit Brussel
- 2000–2006 Research & Teaching Assistant, Social Psychology Lab, VUBrussel
- 1999 Master in Cognitive Science, Université Libre de Bruxelles
- 1998 MSc in Psychology (Clinical/Experimental), Vrije Universiteit Brussel
PhD project
Apply now for a competitive BBSRC EastBio 4-year PhD project "Sense of agency in interaction with AI versus humans" (deadline 27 Nov 2023, start 1 Oct 2024)
Qualifications
- Higher Education Academy Fellow2018 - University of Aberdeen
- PhD Psychology2006 - Vrije Universiteit Brussel
- MSc Cognitive Science1999 - Université Libre de Bruxelles
- MSc Psychology1998 - Vrije Universiteit Brussel
Memberships and Affiliations
- Internal Memberships
-
- Psychology Ethics Committee 2023–
- Psychology Education Committee 2022–23
- School representative to the Senate 2015–16 / 2022–26
- School of Psychology first aider (First Aid at Work SCQF Level 6) 2019–
- External Memberships
-
- ASSC Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness
- ESCoP European Society for Cognitive Psychology
- Research
-
Research Overview
- Social cognition: social interaction, action contingencies & interaction dynamics, gaze & eye tracking, social reward, virtual avatars, social agency. Consciousness: perceptual awareness and metacognition, implicit learning, subliminal perception, agency.
Current Research
Topics & Projects
Here's some of what's currently going on or will be in the near future. Undergraduates, prospective PhD students or postdocs, please enquire — people with skills in Python, Vizard, MatLab, eye tracking, or Cross-Recurrence Quantification Analysis (CRQA) are especially welcome:
- Social cognition in interaction versus observation
- Social versus monetary reward in social cognition & motor learning
- Real-time gaze-based social interaction, analysis of interaction dynamics
- Ascriptions of self- and other-agency in social interaction
- Subjective measures of consciousness and metacognition
Supervision
Apply for a BBSRC EastBio PhD project "Sense of agency in interactions with AI versus humans" (deadline 27 Nov 2023, starting October 2024)
Current SInC lab members:
- Louis Aldrich (PhD student, visual perspective taking / imagery, with Patric Bach)
- Crystal Silver (PhD student, sense of agency in social interaction, with Rama Chakravarthi & Ben Tatler)
- Gosia Kasprzyk (PhD student, behavioural effects of gaze and social interaction-related reward, with Madge Jackson)
- Lior Weinreich (PhD student external supervisor, cyber-bullying and learning disorders, @LMU München with Gerd Schulte-Körne & Kristina Moll)
Former SInC lab members:
- Antonietta Chaliou (PhD student, psychopathic traits and social facial expressions, with Lynden Miles / PhD 2023)
- Chris Luke (Postdoc, Dual Interactive eye tracking with Virtual Avatars, 2016-17)
- Iva Barišić (RA, Dual Interactive eye tracking with Virtual Avatars, 2010-13, Cologne)
- Sarah Schwarzkopf (RA, visual perspective taking in autism, 2010-12, Cologne)
Funding and Grants
Principal Investigator
- 2019—2023 Carnegie Trust Research Incentive Grant (RIG008270) — "Experiencing myself through you: Self-agency in social interaction" £10,000
- 2015—2019 Marie Curie Career Integration Grant (EU FP7-PEOPLE-2013-CIG) — "DUALGAZE: Social cognition in gaze-based interaction" €100,000
- 2010—2013 Volkswagen Foundation grant — “Being addressed as you: Conceptual and empirical investigations of a Second-Person approach to other minds” — co-PI with L. Schilbach (University Hospital of Cologne), T. Schlicht (Ruhr-University of Bochum), N. Steinbeis (MPI Leipzig) €316,650
- 2009—2011 Marie Curie Intra-European Fellowship (EU FP7-PEOPLE-IEF-2008) — "SOCIAL BRAIN: How does our brain learn to be social?" €168,700
Other
- 2019—2023 Participant to, and UK Management Committee Substitute for COST Action (CA18106) “The neural architecture of consciousness” (PI Kristian Sandberg, Aarhus University)
- 2015—2018 Research partner to PI Michal Wierzchon, Jagiellonian University of Krakow, on a HARMONIA grant from the Polish National Science Centre — "Cognitive and neuronal mechanisms of metacognitive awareness"
- Teaching
-
Courses
Teaching Responsibilities
Undergraduate
- Level 1-3 — Psychology Methodology curriculum coordinator
- Level 3 — PS3015 Methodology A [course coordinator; GLM/SPSS]
- Level 3 — PS3522 Methodology B [course coordinator; GLM/SPSS; research project supervisor]
- Level 3-4 — SX3504 Consciousness [course coordinator; Behavioural Measures]
- Level 4 — PS4019 / PS4038 Psychology Thesis [supervision]
Postgraduate
- MRes — PS5302 / PS5801 Basic & Advanced Research Methods for Postgraduates [R: ANOVA/Factor Analysis/Logistic regression]
- MRes — PS5017 Research Project for Postgraduate Students in Psychology [supervision]
- MSc Psychological Studies — PS5903 Research Project [supervision]
- Publications
-
Page 2 of 2 Results 26 to 46 of 46
Introspective minds: using ALE meta-analyses to investigate commonalities in the neural correlates of emotional processing, social and unconstrained cognition
PloS ONE, vol. 7, no. 2, e30920Contributions to Journals: Articles- [ONLINE] DOI: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0030920
- [OPEN ACCESS] http://aura.abdn.ac.uk/bitstream/2164/3561/1/Introspective_minds.pdf
Spontaneous goal inferences are often inferred faster than spontaneous trait inferences
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, vol. 48, no. 1, pp. 13-18Contributions to Journals: Articles- [ONLINE] DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2011.06.016
Measuring consciousness: task accuracy and awareness as sigmoid functions of stimulus duration
Consciousness and Cognition, vol. 20, no. 4, pp. 1659-1675Contributions to Journals: Articles- [ONLINE] DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.concog.2011.09.002
A non-verbal Turing test: differentiating mind from machine in gaze-based social interaction
PloS ONE, vol. 6, no. 11, e27591Contributions to Journals: ArticlesMeasuring consciousness: is one measure better than the other?
Consciousness and Cognition, vol. 19, no. 4, pp. 1069-1078Contributions to Journals: ArticlesPartial awareness distinguishes between measuring conscious perception and conscious content: Reply to Dienes and Seth
Consciousness and Cognition, vol. 19, no. 4, pp. 1081-1083Contributions to Journals: Comments and Debates- [ONLINE] DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.concog.2010.05.006
Know thyself: metacognitive networks and measures of consciousness
Cognition, vol. 117, no. 2, pp. 182-190Contributions to Journals: ArticlesExperiencing more complexity than we can tell
Cognitive Neuroscience, vol. 1, no. 3, pp. 229-230Contributions to Journals: Comments and Debates- [ONLINE] DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/17588928.2010.497586
Optimizing subjective measures of consciousness
Consciousness and Cognition, vol. 19, no. 2, pp. 682-684Contributions to Journals: Comments and DebatesHow unconscious is subliminal perception?
Handbook of Phenomenology and Cognitive Science. Gallagher, S., Schmicking, D. (eds.). Springer, pp. 501-518, 18 pagesChapters in Books, Reports and Conference Proceedings: ChaptersMetacognitive networks and measures of consciousness
Chapters in Books, Reports and Conference Proceedings: Conference ProceedingsConsciousness and metarepresentation: A computational sketch
Neural Networks, vol. 20, no. 9, pp. 1032-1039Contributions to Journals: ArticlesThe geographic distribution of Big Five personality traits: Patterns and profiles of human self-description across 56 nations
Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, vol. 38, no. 2, pp. 173-212Contributions to Journals: Articles- [ONLINE] DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/0022022106297299
Discounting and the role of the relationship between causes
European Journal of Social Psychology, vol. 35, no. 2, pp. 199-223Contributions to Journals: Articles- [ONLINE] http://www.vub.ac.be/EXTO/Publications/pubint.pdf
- [ONLINE] DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/ejsp.241
Patterns and Universals of Adult Romantic Attachment Across 62 Cultural Regions: Are Models of Self and of Other Pancultural Constructs?
Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, vol. 35, no. 4, pp. 367-402Contributions to Journals: ArticlesPatterns and Universals of Mate Poaching Across 53 Nations: The Effects of Sex, Culture, and Personality on Romantically Attracting Another Person's Partner
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, vol. 86, no. 4, pp. 560-584Contributions to Journals: ArticlesAre men universally more dismissing than women? Gender differences in romantic attachment across 62 cultural regions
Personal Relationships, vol. 10, no. 3, pp. 307-331Contributions to Journals: ArticlesUniversal sex differences in the desire for sexual variety: Tests from 52 nations, 6 continents, and 13 islands
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, vol. 85, no. 1, pp. 85-104Contributions to Journals: ArticlesLearning about an absent cause: Discounting and augmentation of positively and independently related causes
Chapters in Books, Reports and Conference Proceedings: Conference ProceedingsRules versus statistics in implicit learning of biconditional grammars.
Chapters in Books, Reports and Conference Proceedings: Conference ProceedingsRules versus statistics in biconditional grammar learning: A simulation based on Shanks et al. (1997)
Chapters in Books, Reports and Conference Proceedings: Conference Proceedings
