The prevalence of poor mental health is rising, and correspondingly the public increasingly seek self-directed practices to promote wellbeing. One popular intervention is the Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response (ASMR), which is a tingling sensation like “chills” that some people experience in response to certain kinds of sounds. It is accompanied by a feeling of relaxation and subjective wellbeing, leading to the widespread belief that ASMR can reduce anxiety, stress, and sleep difficulties. However, conducting a rigorous assessment of these mental health claims requires a greater understanding of when ASMR occurs, how to optimise it for individual use, and empirical tests of the perceived benefits to mental health and wellbeing. 

Project Contact: Dr Michel Belyk

Rehabilitating motor functions after spinal cord injury is an important predictor of return to independent living. However, physical rehabilitation can be fatiguing and painful which places practical limitations on rates of recovery (Beani et al, 2020). Our research has shown that brain stimulation can be used to improve neuroplasticity and therefore enhance recovery rates after spinal cord injury (Capozio et al., under review). Recovery can also be improved by having patients observe someone else performing rehabilitation movements, a technique called Action Observation, because observed movements engage a similar network of cortical and subcortical areas as actual movement (Sale, 2012). However, watching someone else perform repetitive movements is not sufficiently engaging to ensure high rates of patient compliance. Some clinics have begun to use observation of dance as a more rewarding activity (Patterson et al., 2018), but it is not currently known whether this intervention engages the brain regions that are required as a successful supplement to traditional rehab.

Project contact: Dr Antonio Capozio

Loneliness is associated with a range of negative effects on physical and mental health and has been recently declared by the World Health Organisation as a global public health concern. Within the UK, chronic loneliness affects approximately 7.1% of the population and is thought to cost the economy over £2.5 billion each year. In response to this, a multitude of interventions have been developed, however, recent systematic reviews suggest variation in terms of effectiveness. One factor identified as important in influencing the utility of interventions is their ability to speak to the relationships between loneliness and social cognition. However, there is a lack of longitudinal data muddies our understanding of the interplay and causal relationships between loneliness and social cognition. Secondly, studies do not address key aspects of social cognition that underpin successful social interactions and tend to be designed around lab-based computerised tasks lacking real-world validity.

Project contact: Dr Felicity Wolohan

Reading offers a wealth of opportunities for children and young people to develop key skills such as language, comprehension and social cognition (E.g., Torppa et al., 2019; van der Kleij et al 2022a). However, recent research demonstrates that reading, particularly leisure reading, can also have a diverse range of positive effects on children and young people’s wellbeing (Currie et al., under review; Sun et al.,2023). Writing can also offer children and young people the opportunity to express their emotions and relax (Clarke et al., 2024). 

Despite such benefits, a number of children and young people face barriers to literacy and therefore may be less likely to experience the potential positive effects of reading and writing on wellbeing. Further, recent large-scale surveys across the UK indicate a decline in the time that children and young people spend reading and writing for leisure (Clark et al., 2024; Clark et al., 2023). It is, therefore, critical that we seek to better understand the experiences of children and young people with literacy difficulties, how best to support them to have positive reading and writing experiences, and in doing so identify opportunities to support their wellbeing. 

Project contact: Dr Nicola Currie

Learning and memory are crucial cognitive functions, essential for navigating daily life. Spatial navigation, a key aspect of these functions, is shared across species, yet its study has faced challenges in bridging animal and human research due to differences in experimental conditions. To tackle this issue, our project employs the digital platform Minecraft to explore the influence of prior knowledge (schemas) on spatial learning and memory. Building on research that demonstrates the role of schemas in facilitating the rapid integration of information (Tse et al., 2007, 2011; van Kesteren, 2012; Alonso et al., 2020; Sekeres et al., 2024), we investigate how people form schemas and acquire knowledge in Minecraft. Aligned with the United Nations’ sustainable development goal to promote well-being at all ages, this project aims to develop innovative interventions for cognitive health.

Project contact: Dr Dorothy Tse

Research has revealed that stalking is not an isolated event and is often associated with sexual violence (SV) and intimate partner violence (IPV) (Stefanska & Longpré, 2024). Stalking, SV and IPV are serious public health issues, where women and non-binary people are disproportionally victimized (Beckett & Longpré, 2023).  

There is limited access to stalking actuarial scales to assess the risk of violence and future related offences (Longpré et al., 2023). Furthermore, the low predictive value of some measures, some based on weak empirical support, hinder our efforts to effectively assess the risk of stalking, especially in the context of SV and IPV. Not all risk factors are likely to be equally related to the same risk and a careful consideration of the context and how it might impact the level of risk should increase our ability to predict the outcome and course of actions needed (Longpré et al., 2024).  There is an urgent need to determine whether there is a particular threshold along the stalking continuum that would call for specific interventions.

Project contact: Dr Nicholas Longpré

Courtroom decisions should be made exclusively on the evidence presented. However, decades of research show that jurors often rely on extra-legal factors, particularly when the evidence is ambiguous or complex, which can lead to biased decision-making (Devine et al., 2009; 2016). In such situations, individuals often rely on cognitive shortcuts, known as heuristics, which are associated with less effortful processing and more biased decision-making (Chiken 1980), raising significant concerns in legal contexts.   Individuals with high levels of schizotypal characteristics (Lenzenweger, 2006), often exhibit the cognitive Jump to conclusions bias, making decisions quickly based on minimal evidence (Huq et al., 1998). It is also associated with a tendency to persist in endorsing initial decision(s) even when confronted with evidence that contradicts or challenges them (Orenes et al., 2012). While most studies have focused on examining decision-making in schizotypy using probabilistic tasks (e.g., Galbraith, Manktelow & Morris, 2008), limited research has investigated this issue using crime-based scenarios (e.g, Wilkinson & Caulfield, 2017), and none has specifically addressed courtroom contexts.

Project contact: Dr Dean Wilkinson

Misophonia is characterised by negative emotional reactions to everyday sounds, such as chewing or tapping, is a debilitating condition that can affect an individual’s quality of life. Despite its growing prevalence—affecting an estimated 18% of the UK population (Vitoratou et al., 2023)—misophonia remains a poorly understood condition. Evidence based mitigation is still preliminary, partly due to the lack of primary research, with a need to investigate how auditory cues combine with visual inputs to evoke misophonic reactions. More research is needed to deepen our understanding of misophonia by exploring the role of multisensory perception and mimicry in triggering aversive responses to specific sounds.

Project contact: Dr Valeria Occelli

Theory of mind (ToM), the ability to understand that people have different beliefs and knowledge to oneself, is key to social interaction. This includes being able to detect sarcasm, faux pas and deception within interactions. However, there has been little research on how and if ToM is affected by alcohol consumption (though see Monk et al., 2023), and how being drunk may make individuals susceptible to deception or more likely to misinterpret intentions. It is also not yet understood how contextual cues and social interactions impact ToM capacity may further while intoxicated. Misinterpretation of social cues can be a key factor in confrontations (Sprung et al., 2022), and in light of the concerns and costs associated with violence in the nighttime economy (Philpot et al., 2019). Research in this area is therefore needed and projects in this area could use a range of tasks to measure facets of ToM using different methodologies (cognitive-behavioural tasks (e.g. Monk et al., 2023), video vignettes, eye-tracking, facial electromyography, transcranial magnetic stimulation) to assess if and how alcohol consumption affects ToM, with an overall aim to relate this to real world (mis)behaviours.

Project contact: Dr Adam Qureshi

Given the popularity of emoji within everyday communication, it is pertinent to establish the extent to which the concepts emoji represent might correspond to conceptual knowledge stored in semantic memory. For example, when we perceive pizza emoji, do we integrate gustatory and olfactory sensory affordances to this, in the way we might do when we perceive this object in the physical world? We aim to quantify the perceptual and action strength of concepts represented in emoji. From this, we can then explore issues such as how sensorimotor strength of emoji might facilitate how we process them. With this knowledge, we might then be well placed to test how perceptual affordances of emoji might relate to a range of cognitive and behavioural outcomes.

Project contact: Professor Linda Kaye