Dr Rachel Swainson
Lecturer
- About
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- 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
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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
Psychology
- Teaching
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Teaching Responsibilities
- PS1009: Introductory Psychology I: Concepts & Theory (Biological Psychology lectures)
- PS3014: Biological Psychology (Psychopharmacology lectures)
- Publications
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Page 1 of 1 Results 1 to 31 of 31
Social category modulation of the happy face advantage.
Personality and Social Psychology BulletinContributions to Journals: Articles- [ONLINE] DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/01461672241310917
The Task-Switch Cost is Still Absent After Selectively Stopping a Response in Cued Task Switching
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition, vol. 50, no. 10, pp. 1579–1591Contributions to Journals: ArticlesIntergroup processes and the happy face advantage: How social categories influence emotion categorization
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, vol. 126, no. 3, pp. 390-412Contributions to Journals: ArticlesPreparing a task is sufficient to generate a subsequent task-switch cost affecting task performance
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition, vol. 50, no. 1, pp. 39-51Contributions to Journals: ArticlesInvestigating task preparation and task performance as triggers of the backward inhibition effect
Psychological Research, vol. 87, pp. 1816-1835Contributions to Journals: ArticlesThe effect of performing versus preparing a task on the subsequent switch cost
Psychological Research, vol. 85, pp. 364-383Contributions to Journals: ArticlesTask cues lead to item-level backward inhibition with univalent stimuli and responses
Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, vol. 73, no. 3, pp. 442-457Contributions to Journals: ArticlesTask-switch costs subsequent to cue-only trials
Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, vol. 70, no. 8, pp. 1453-1470Contributions to Journals: ArticlesThe simultaneous extraction of multiple social categories from unfamiliar faces
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, vol. 60, pp. 51-58Contributions to Journals: Articles- [ONLINE] DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2015.03.009
- [OPEN ACCESS] http://aura.abdn.ac.uk/bitstream/2164/8252/1/Martin_JESP_in_press.pdf
Covert judgements are sufficient to trigger subsequent task-switching costs
Psychological Research, vol. 77, no. 4, pp. 434-448Contributions to Journals: ArticlesTwo measures of task-specific inhibition
Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology. A, Human Experimental Psychology, vol. 65, no. 2, pp. 233-251Contributions to Journals: Articles- [ONLINE] DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/17470210903431732
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
Do women with fragile X syndrome have problems in switching attention: Preliminary findings from ERP and fMRI
Brain and Cognition, vol. 54, no. 3, pp. 235-239Contributions to Journals: Articles- [ONLINE] DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bandc.2004.02.017
ERP correlates of a receptive language-switching task
Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology. A, Human Experimental Psychology, vol. 57, no. 2, pp. 223-240Contributions to Journals: Articles- [ONLINE] DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/02724980343000198
Mental representation of number in different numerical forms
Current Biology, vol. 13, no. 23, pp. 2045-2050Contributions to Journals: Articles- [ONLINE] DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2003.11.023
Cognitive control mechanisms revealed by ERP and fMRI: Evidence from repeated task-switching
Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, vol. 15, no. 6, pp. 785-799Contributions to Journals: Articles- [ONLINE] DOI: https://doi.org/10.1162/089892903322370717
Improved short-term spatial memory but impaired following the dopamine D-2 agonist bromocriptine reversal learning in human volunteers
Psychopharmacology, vol. 159, no. 1, pp. 10-20Contributions to Journals: Articles- [ONLINE] DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s002130100851
ERP Correlates of executive control during repeated language-switching
Bilingualism, vol. 4, no. 2, pp. 169-178Contributions to Journals: Articles- [ONLINE] DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S1366728901000268
Early detection and differential diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease and depression with neuropsychological tasks
Dementia and Geriatric Cognitive Disorders, vol. 12, pp. 265-280Contributions to Journals: Articles- [ONLINE] DOI: https://doi.org/10.1159/000051269
Rule-abstraction deficits following a basal ganglia lesion
Neurocase, vol. 7, no. 5, pp. 433-444Contributions to Journals: ArticlesProbabilistic learning and reversal deficits in patients with Parkinson's disease or frontal or temporal lobe lesions: possible adverse effects of dopaminergic medication
Neuropsychologia, vol. 38, no. 5, pp. 596-612Contributions to Journals: ArticlesDissociable deficits in the decision-making cognition of chronic amphetamine abusers, opiate abusers, patients with focal damage to prefrontal cortex, and tryptophan-depleted normal volunteers: Evidence for monoaminergic mechanisms
Neuropsychopharmacology, vol. 20, no. 4, pp. 322-339Contributions to Journals: Articles- [ONLINE] DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/S0893-133X(98)00091-8