I am Associate Head of the Department of Psychology at the University of the West of England. My research areas are quite diverse and include, evaluative conditioning, implicit cognition, learning and anxiety, pro-environmental behaviour, neural network models of implicit learning, and e-learning, mainly using experimental research methods but with some qualitative methods (e.g., thematic analysis).
I have developed several educational software applications, such as Marker's Black Box (to assist in providing feedback on student coursework), LabWriteUp (to help students write up their research report or dissertation), and Discourse WriteUp (to help students conduct thematic analysis and write up their qualitative research report).
I obtained a PhD at Imperial College (London) in the Faculty of Engineering on a neural network model of emotional learning. I have been a lecturer and researcher for the past 20 years and have worked at Goldsmiths College, the Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit at Cambridge, University of Worcester, University of Gloucestershire, and University of Murica in Spain.
Evaluative learning concerns how we can come to like or dislike something through an association.
If something quite innocuous (such as an unfamiliar person, object, or picture, and so on) is presented alongside something that we strongly dislike (such as a very unpleasant odour) then our feelings to that once innocuous item can change—we can come to dislike that too.
The same can apply when an item is paired with something we strongly like—we can come to like that item more.
An example that most people are likely to have experienced is a person's name. I am sure you can think of names that you strongly dislike. Some of these may be the names of people from your past who you disliked a lot. It is quite remarkable how strongly we can feel towards certain names, as anyone who has ever had to name a child will tell you.
If evaluative learning is indeed a common way through which our likes and dislikes are formed then there are many interesting implications. Firstly, children can be better encouraged to do things that will benefit them, such as eating vegetables, brushing their teeth, learnig to read, and so on. Secondly, evaluative learning may be one way through which fears and anxiety are acquired.
My main research interests are in evaluative conditioning (aka evaluative learning), with an emphasis on its application to anxiety disorders and its relationship with attentional bias. I am also interested in proenvironmental behaviour and the use of persuasive messages to encourage voluntary behaviour change.
My research interests include connectionist psychology, cognition and emotion, and social cognition. Most of my research has been conducted on evaluative learning, allocation of attention in anxiety, and connectionist modelling. I recently held a research award from the Wellcome Trust (£70,000) examining causal factors in anxiety. For this I collaborated with Andrew Mathews (MRC Cognition & Brain Sciences Unit, Cambridge), Dianne Catherwood (University of Gloucestershire), Colin MacLeod (University of Western Australia) and Michelle Craske (UCLA). I previously held another Wellcome Trust research grant from 1997 to 2000 on the acquisition of emotional information, collaborating with Andrew Mathews and Bundy Mackintosh at the Cognition & Brain Sciences Unit, Cambridge. My most recent publications are on the issue of awareness in evaluative learning and for this I collaborate with Marianne Hammerl at the University of Deusseldorf. I am also interested in 'Green Psychology' and the role that established psychological theories can play in persuading and encouraging people to engage in proenvironmental behaviour.