Senior Lecturer
- About
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- Email Address
- m.jackson@abdn.ac.uk
- Telephone Number
- +44 (0)1224 272236
- Office Address
School of Psychology William Guild Building Room G13 Kings College Old Aberdeen AB24 3FX
- School/Department
- School of Psychology
Biography
I graduated with a BSc (HONS) in Psychology from the University of Aberdeen, after which I achieved an MSc in Marketing from the University of Strathclyde. After a few years conducting qualitative research on health interventions and behaviours (Glasgow, Centre for Social Marketing - now Institute in Stirling) I joined the Psychology department at Bangor University in North Wales to help deliver and monitor a schools-based intervention designed to increase children's fruit and vegetable consumption ('Food Dudes' programme). I then returned to experimental Psychology and gained my PhD from Bangor University in 2005, which investigated the influence of familiarity on attention and working memory for faces. I completed two post-doc positions there before I moved back to where it all began to start my first lectureship in the School of Psychology in Aberdeen in 2012. My research areas are broadly situated within the field of social cognition, and more specifically focused on face, eye gaze, and emotional expression processing, predictive processing (emotion prediction), and the role of attention and working memory in social processing. More recently my interests have expanded to neurodiversity.
Memberships and Affiliations
- Internal Memberships
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Student Development Lead in the School of Psychology
Co-Chair of the University's Neurodiversity Network
Committee/Group membership:
- Equality, Diversity, & Inclusion Committee, School of Psychology
- Student Experience and Support Committee, University of Aberdeen
- Mental Health and Wellbeing Group, University of Aberdeen
- Employability and Entrepreneurship Committee, University of Aberdeen
- External Memberships
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External Examiner for MSc Social Cognition course at UCL (postgraduate)
Aurora women in leadership course completion, 2021-22
Latest Publications
Competition between emotional faces in visuo-spatial working memory
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and CognitionContributions to Journals: ArticlesPrevalence and Characterization of Avoidant Restrictive Food Intake Disorder in a Paediatric Population
JAACAP Open, vol. 1, no. 2, pp. 116-127Contributions to Journals: ArticlesAttentional Load Effects on Emotional Content in Face Working Memory
Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, vol. 76, no. 7, pp. 1696-1709Contributions to Journals: ArticlesIncreased perceptual distraction and task demand enhances gaze and non-biological cuing effects
Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, vol. 74, no. 2, pp. 221-240Contributions to Journals: ArticlesA cross-cultural investigation into the influence of eye gaze on working memory for happy and angry faces
Cognition & Emotion, vol. 34, no. 8, pp. 1561-1572Contributions to Journals: Articles
- Research
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Current Research
- Main research areas: Social Attention and Memory, Emotion Prediction, Emotion Processing, Gaze, Faces, Neurodiversity
Funding and Grants
ESRC Standard Grant (PI). March 2015 - March 2017. Remembering who was where: The influence of threatening emotional expressions on visuo-spatial working memory for faces. £279,258.
BBSRC (Co-App). 2009-2012. The neurobiology of human working memory for threat: a multi-method approach. £318,404.
- Teaching
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Teaching Responsibilities
Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (HEA)
Lectures
- Level 1: Emotion
- Level 3 / MSc: Developmental Psychology (social and emotional development): Course coordinator
- Level 4: Emotion & Aging in Social Cognition: Course coordinator
- MRes: Research Dissemination and Peer-review
Group Work
- Level 3 Methods research projects
- Level 3 Theory tutorials
Undergraduate and postgraduate Thesis Supervision