![Dr Rachel Swainson Dr Rachel Swainson](/img/200x200/staffpages/uploads/psy470/RachelSwainson_150_200.jpg)
Lecturer
- About
-
- Email Address
- r.swainson@abdn.ac.uk
- Telephone Number
- +44 (0)1224 273918
- Office Address
School of Psychology William Guild Building Room F08 Kings College Old Aberdeen AB24 3FX
- School/Department
- School of Psychology
Biography
I received my BSc in Neuroscience (1994) from the University of Sheffield and my PhD (1998) from the University of Cambridge, where I was supervised by Prof. Trevor Robbins. I then worked with Prof. Barbara Sahakian at the University of Cambridge (1998-1999) and with Prof. Georgina Jackson and Prof. Stephen Jackson at the University of Nottingham (2000-2006). I held a Leverhulme Special Research Fellowship (2002-2004) and my first lectureship (2004-2006) at the University of Nottingham. I have been a lecturer at the University of Aberdeen since 2007.
Internal Memberships
Staff Development Lead, School of Psychology
Member of the School's Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Committee
- Research
-
Research Overview
Human cognition is massively flexible. There are innumerable ways in which we can process stimuli and respond to them, and when situations change, we can change our behaviour. This flexibility brings the need for control so that our behaviour is reasonably consistent over time and yet also able to be changed when necessary. Task-switching research enables us to examine these aspects of cognitive control in the lab.
Tasks can be thought of as rules for processing stimuli and selecting actions. I am interested in the reasons for the switch costs in performance that arise when we need to switch between alternative tasks. Recent research questions include: whether the subsequent switch costs generated by simply preparing one of two tasks (without performing it) differ from those generated by performing the prepared task; and what it takes to abolish the effects of preparation – when we abandon a prepared task – before they impact upon subsequent performance in the form of a switch cost.
Research Areas
Accepting PhDs
I am currently accepting PhDs in Psychology.
Please get in touch if you would like to discuss your research ideas further.
Psychology
Accepting PhDs - Teaching
-
Teaching Responsibilities
- PS1009: Introductory Psychology I: Concepts & Theory (Biological Psychology lectures)
- PS3014: Biological Psychology (Psychopharmacology lectures)
- Publications
-
Page 2 of 3 Results 11 to 20 of 30
Feedback-related negativity codes prediction error, but not behavioural adjustment during probabilistic reversal learning
Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, vol. 23, no. 4, pp. 936-946Contributions to Journals: Articles- [ONLINE] DOI: https://doi.org/10.1162/jocn.2010.21456
Attention, competition, and the parietal lobes: insights from Balint's syndrome
Psychological Research, vol. 73, no. 2, pp. 263-270Contributions to Journals: Articles- [ONLINE] DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-008-0210-2
ERP indices of persisting and current inhibitory control: A study of saccadic task switching
Neuroimage, vol. 45, no. 1, pp. 191-197Contributions to Journals: Articles- [ONLINE] DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2008.11.019
The role of spatial information in advance task-set control: an event-related potential study
European Journal of Neuroscience, vol. 28, no. 7, pp. 1404-1418Contributions to Journals: Articles- [ONLINE] DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1460-9568.2008.06439.x
Event related potentials reveal that increasing perceptual load leads to increased responses for target stimuli and decreased responses for irrelevant stimuli
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, vol. 2, 4Contributions to Journals: ArticlesFractionating the cognitive control required to bring about a change in task: a dense-sensor event-related potential study
Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, vol. 20, no. 2, pp. 255-267Contributions to Journals: Articles- [ONLINE] DOI: https://doi.org/10.1162/jocn.2008.20015
Behavioural and neurophysiological correlates of bivalent and univalent responses during task switching
Brain Research, vol. 1157, pp. 56-65Contributions to Journals: Articles- [ONLINE] DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.brainres.2007.04.046
Dissociating neural indices of dynamic cognitive control in advance task-set preparation: An ERP study of task switching
Brain Research, vol. 1125, no. 1, pp. 94-103Contributions to Journals: Articles- [ONLINE] DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.brainres.2006.09.092
Using advance information in dynamic cognitive control: An ERP study of task-switching
Brain Research, vol. 1105, no. 1, pp. 61-72Contributions to Journals: Articles- [ONLINE] DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.brainres.2006.02.027
Impaired dimensional selection but intact use of reward feedback during visual discrimination learning in Parkinson's disease
Neuropsychologia, vol. 44, no. 8, pp. 1290-1304Contributions to Journals: Articles- [ONLINE] DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/J.NEUROPSYCHOLOGIA.2006.01.028