|
Dr Philip Beaman Tel: +44 (0) 118 378 7637
My brain (handsome, eh?)
Hold the front page…!
Click on the
front-covers to follow the links for these publications. Useful Stuff: Experimental Psychology Society Quasi-academic stuff: How
interesting ….. How
to go about doing things the hard way. Why
do I have this seeming obsession with incompetence, I wonder….? “I
don’t belie-eve it….!” Really not very academic stuff: Snooks of Bridport (great name,
great hats) The mystery place (Ellery Queen) PG Wodehouse Quotation Generator Everyone on their feet,
please! Evil, it turns out, has two names… …
and the imagined village again Wallingford Bunkfest (do come along,
it’ll be great fun)
Theo
the Portuguese Beach Boy (7 months)
Ol’ Brown Eyes (1 yr)
Yuletide fun (2 yrs)
Little Brother Joe (1 day), Dec 2010
Da Boyz |
Welcome to the homepage for the Cognitive Science
Lab. Dr Philip Beaman, Lab Director Senior
Lecturer (Associate Professor) in Cognitive Psychology
Some Personal Background: I graduated from Cardiff
University with a BA and PhD in Psychology (supervised by Professor Dylan
Jones OBE DSc) and an MSc in Cognitive Science (under the instruction of
Professor Steve
Payne, now in the Computer Science Department at the University of Bath).
I then worked at the Medical Research Council’s Cognitive Development Unit at
University College London as a postdoctoral research fellow (or “non-clinical
scientific officer”) for the Unit Director, Professor John Morton OBE FRS
(now at the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience) before coming to Reading as
a lecturer. What is Cognitive Science? Cognitive Science
is the interdisciplinary study of intelligent behaviour and mental function.
The cognitive sciences are those disciplines (not all sciences!) which are
interested in the nature of mind, including (but not limited to)
anthropology, artificial intelligence, cognitive psychology, education,
linguistics, neuroscience and the philosophy of mind. The underlying idea is
that solving the problem of intelligence and intelligent behaviour requires
more than one approach, with each contributing discipline providing a
particular, distinct perspective and methodology. This laboratory primarily,
but not wholly, uses methods and techniques from experimental psychology – we
also employ aspects of behavioural economics, computational and mathematical
modelling, neuroimaging, cognitive anthropology and philosophical
analysis. Main Research Focus & Collaborations: Immediate Memory: What are the factors that limit immediate
memory capacity (decay of the engram? interference between representations?)
and the consequences that limited immediate memory has for other cognitive
capabilities. Interference between representations (or processes)
is a more likely reason why immediate memory is limited than some kind of
fixed-slot model, but this is an open question. Exploratory work has involved computational modelling of individual
differences in immediate memory, in collaboration with Ian Neath and Aimée Surprenant
(Memorial University of Newfoundland) (paper available to download from
below). Auditory Attention: Work carried out
a few years ago in collaboration with Dylan Jones and Bill Macken (Cardiff University), Dianne Berry OBE (Reading)
and Tom
Campbell (UCDavis), examined which tasks are most susceptible to
auditory distraction. A new collaboration (involving Dylan Jones, John
Marsh, Maciej
Hanczakowski, Rob
Hughes and Patrik
Sörqvist) focuses on meaningful auditory distraction. This
"irrelevant sound effect" has obvious practical implications for
the design of work places and study areas (research on-going in collaboration
with Nigel
Holt). In collaboration with Sophie Scott and colleagues (University College London) the
neural underpinnings of selective auditory attention have been examined.
Recent conversations with Andy
Bridges (Central Queensland University) have covered attention and
lateralization of function and collaboration with Fabrice Parmentier
(Universities of Western Australia and
the Balearic Islands, lucky chap) has examined timing and rhythm in
attentional capture. Work with Tim Williams
has examined “earworms” – those irritating tunes that get stuck in your head.
People find that very interesting for some reason. High-level Cognition: All kinds of
oddities to do with actual, deliberate thought. Included in this are:
cognitive evolution, and the possibility of non-halting procedures
in cognition and other things that are more related to philosophical
background than day-to-day lab-work. More prosaically, we examine the extent
to which seemingly complex decision-making and choice behaviours can be
accounted for (or supplemented by) a collection of fairly simple rules. Many
students take the view that the mind/brain is complex but easy to understand
– We work from the opposite assumption that the operating principles of the
mind are actually quite simple but the behaviours it produces can be hard to
understand. Most of this has been in collaboration with Rachel McCloy,
Caren
Frosch (University of Leicester) and Philip Smith. Cognitive Engineering: The application of cognitive theory to improve the usefulness,
efficiency and enjoyability of what the archaeologists call “material
culture”, i.e., any kind of tool or artefact from the simplest (documents,
hand-held tools) to the more complex (ipads, smartphones). Following on from
this, we have attempted to apply some simple ideas and principles about human
thought and the control of behaviour to an important social problem – the
design of carbon neutral and energy-efficient sustainable buildings for the
future. Buildings expected, and engineered, to be carbon neutral are found
not to be in practice, and much of this difference between the design
intention and the actual performance can be laid squarely at the door of
occupant behaviour. A Research Engineer (Richard
Tetlow) sponsored by AECOM
and the EPSRC is working on this project in collaboration with this Lab and
with Abbas
Elmualim, through the auspices of the Technologies for Sustainable Built
Environments (TSBE) centre at the University. Rich has just been awarded the
Best Paper (as judged by industry) at the annual TSBE conference for the
second year running – Well done, Rich! See the “Current and on-going work” section for the latest
developments on any of these projects. Keywords for my interests include: Subject areas: cognitive
architecture, cognitive modelling, cognitive science, cognitive engineering,
experimental psychology, philosophy of mind, philosophy of science. Topics: attention, auditory
cognition, distraction, fast and frugal heuristics, judgement (judgment) and
decision-making, short-term memory, working memory. …although as the above indicates, I’m also interested in other things
besides. Multidisciplinary centres around the University with which I am
associated, or with whom I have links: Centre
for Cognition Research (CCR) Centre for Integrative
Neuroscience & Neurodynamics (CINN) Technologies for Sustainable
Built Environments (TSBE) Centre If you are interested in a topic close to any of my
research interests (auditory distraction, immediate memory, cognitive limits and high-level cognition
(problem-solving, decision-making….)), why not get
in touch with me to discuss ideas and opportunities for study at Reading. Past Members of this Lab: Current Students: Tom Campbell Emily Hancock (PhD) Josh
Davis Richard
Tetlow (EngD) Caren
Frosch
Katharine van Somerin (EngD) Shani McCoy Journals: Beaman, C. P., Hanczakowski,
M., Hodgetts, H. M., Marsh, J. E., & Jones, D. M. (in press). Memory as
discrimination: What distraction reveals. Memory
& Cognition. Beaman, C. P., & Williams,
T. I. (in press). Individual differences in mental control predict
involuntary musical imagery. Musicae
Scientiae. Marsh, J. E., Sörqvist, P.,
Beaman, C. P., & Jones, D. M. (in press). Auditory distraction eliminates
retrieval-induced forgetting: Implications for the processing of unattended
sound. Experimental Psychology. Beaman, C. P. (2013). Inferring
the biggest and best: A measurement model for applying recognition to evoke
consideration sets and choose between multiple alternatives. Cognitive Systems Research, 24, 18-25 (invited submission to special issue on
Best of the International Conference on Cognitive Modelling, 2012) Marsh, J. E., Beaman, C. P.,
Hughes, R. W., & Jones, D. M. (2012). Inhibitory control in memory:
Evidence for negative priming in free recall. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory & Cognition,
38, 1377-88. Beaman, C. P. (2010). Working memory
and working attention: What could possibly evolve? Current Anthropology, 51, S27-S38. Beaman,
C. P., Smith, P. T., Frosch, C., & McCloy, R. (2010). Less-is-more
effects without the recognition heuristic. Judgment
& Decision-Making, 5, 258-271.[Download] Beaman, C. P., & Williams,
T. I. (2010) Earworms (“stuck song
syndrome”): Towards a natural history of intrusive thoughts. British
Journal of Psychology, 101, 637-653. [Links to ABC online and BPS Research Blog describing
this article.] McCloy, R., Beaman, C. P.,
Frosch, C., & Goddard, K. (2010). Fast
and frugal framing effects? Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning,
Memory & Cognition, 36, 1042-1052. Scott,
S. K., Rosen, S., Beaman, C. P., Davis, J., & Wise, R. (2009). The neural processing of
masked speech: Evidence for different mechanisms in the left and right
temporal lobes. Journal of the
Acoustical Society of America, 125, 1737-1743. [Download] Beaman, C. P., Neath, I., &
Surprenant, A. M. (2008). Modeling distributions of immediate memory effects:
No strategies needed? Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory
& Cognition, 34, 219-229. [Download] McCloy, R., Beaman, C. P., & Smith, P. T.
(2008). The relative success of recognition-based inference in
multi-choice decisions. Cognitive Science, 32, 1037-1048. [A spreadsheet to calculate the success of the
recognition heuristic according to different assumptions is available here] Beaman, C. P. (2007). Sherlock Holmes as a
philosopher? Elementary. Nature, 445, 593. [Download] Beaman, C. P. (2007). Modern cognition
in the absence of working memory: Does the working memory account of
Neandertal cognition work? Journal of Human Evolution, 52, 702-706. [Download] Beaman, C. P., Bridges, A. M., &
Scott, S. K. (2007). From dichotic listening to the irrelevant sound effect:
A behavioural and neuroimaging analysis of the processing of unattended
speech. Cortex, 43,
124-134. (Nominated for the 2008 BPS Cognitive Section Prize) [Download] Beaman, C. P. & Holt, N. J. (2007). Reverberant
auditory environments: The effect of multiple echoes on distraction by
“irrelevant” speech. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 21, 1077-1090. [Download] Beaman, C. P., & McCloy, R. (2007).
From base-rate to cumulative respect. Behavioral &
Brain Sciences, 30, 256-257. Frosch, C., Beaman, C. P., & McCloy, R. (2007).
A little learning is a dangerous thing: An experimental demonstration of
ignorance-driven inference. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 60, 1329-1336. [Link to
BPS Research Blog describing this article] Harvey, A. J., & Beaman, C. P. (2007). Input and
output modality effects in immediate serial recall. Memory, 15, 693-700. McCloy, R., Beaman, C. P., Morgan, B., & Speed,
R. (2007). Training conditional and cumulative risk judgments: The role of
frequencies, problem-structure and einstellung. Applied Cognitive
Psychology, 21, 325-344. [Download] Beaman, C. P. (2006). The relationship
between absolute and proportion scores of serial order memory: Simulation
predictions and empirical data. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 13, 92-98. [Download] Hadlington, L., Bridges, A. M.
& Beaman, C. P. (2006). A
left-ear disadvantage for the presentation of irrelevant sound: Manipulations
of task requirements and changing-state. Brain & Cognition, 61, 159-171. [Download] Beaman, C. P. (2006). Attention and
change. Psychology Review, 12,
18-20. Beaman, C. P. (2005). Auditory
distraction from low-intensity noise: A review of the consequences for
learning and workplace environments. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 19, 1041-1064. Beaman, C. P. (2005). Irrelevant sound effects amongst
younger and older adults: Objective findings and subjective insights. European
Journal of Cognitive Psychology, 17,
241-265. Beaman, C. P. & Harvey, A. J. (2005). Access to online
resources: A case study. Psychology, Learning & Teaching, 5, 47-51. Beaman, C. P. (2004). The irrelevant sound phenomenon
revisited: What role for working memory capacity? Journal of Experimental
Psychology: Learning, Memory & Cognition, 30, 1106-1118. [Download] Beaman, C. P. (2002). Why are we good at detecting
cheaters? A reply to Fodor. Cognition, 83, 215-220. [Download] Beaman, C. P. (2002). Inverting the modality effect in
serial recall. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 55A, 371-389.
Beaman, C. P. (2002). Review of "The nature of
remembering". Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 55A, 1047-1049. Campbell, T., Beaman, C. P., & Berry, D. C. (2002). Auditory memory and
the irrelevant sound effect: Further evidence for changing-state disruption. Memory,
10, 199-214. Campbell, T., Beaman, C. P., & Berry, D. C. (2002). Changing-state
disruption of lip-reading by irrelevant sound in perceptual and memory tasks.
European Journal of Cognitive Psychology, 14, 461-474. Beaman, C. P. (2001). The size and nature of a chunk. Behavioral
& Brain Sciences, 24,
118. Beaman, C. P. (2000). Neurons amongst the symbols? Behavioral
& Brain Sciences, 23, 468-470. Beaman, C. P., & Morton, J. (2000). The effects of
rime on auditory recency and the suffix effect. European Journal of
Cognitive Psychology, 12, 223-242. Beaman, C. P., & Morton, J. (2000). The separate but
related origins of the recency and the modality effect in free recall. Cognition,
77, B59-B65. [Download] Beaman, C. P. (1999). Memory's fragile power. Psyche,
5, http://psyche.cs.monash.edu.au/v5/psyche-5-22-beaman.html Beaman, C. P. & Jones, D. M. (1998). Irrelevant sound
disrupts order information in free recall as in serial recall. Quarterly
Journal of Experimental Psychology, 51A, 615-636. Beaman, C. P. & Jones, D. M.
(1997). The role of serial order in the irrelevant speech effect: Tests of
the changing-state hypothesis. Journal of Experimental Psychology:
Learning, Memory & Cognition, 23,
459-471. Book Chapters: Beaman, C. P. &
Holt, N. J. (in press). L'environnement sonore au travail. In L. Rioux, J. Le
Roy, L. Rubens, & J. Le Conte (Ed.s). Le confort au travail : Que nous
apprend la psychologie environnementale? Presses Universitaires de Laval. McCloy, R., Beaman,
C. P., & Smith, P. T. (2011). The relative success of recognition-based
inference in multi-choice decisions. In: G. Gigerenzer, R. Hertwig, & T.
Pachur (Ed.s). Heuristics: The
foundations of adaptive behavior. pp. 351-361. New York: Oxford
University Press. Beaman, C. P. (2003). Working memory. Interview in: M. Cardwell, L. Clark
& C. Meldrum. Psychology for AS-level. Collins Educational
(Reprinted, 2004, in Cardwell et al., Psychology for A-level.) Jones, D. M., Beaman, C. P., & Macken, W. J. (1996). The object-oriented
episodic record model. In: S. E. Gathercole (Ed.) Models of short-term
memory. Hove: Psychology Press. pp. 209-238. Published Conference Proceedings: Tetlow, R., Beaman, C. P.,
Elmualim, A., & Couling, K. (in press). Influencing energy efficient
occupant behaviour through improved building and control design. To appear in
10th International Healthy
Buildings Conference, Melbourne, Australia. Beaman, C. P. (2012). A multinomial model of applying recognition to
judge between multiple alternatives. In: N. Rußwinkel, U. Drewitz, J. Dzaack & H. van Rijn (Ed.s). Proceedings of the
11th International Conference on Cognitive Modelling, (pp. 25-30). Universitaetsverlag der TU Berlin. Beaman, C. P. (2012). Lexical access across languages: A multinomial model of
auditory distraction. In: N. Miyake, D. Peebles & R. P. Cooper (Ed.s). Building Bridges Across Cognitive Sciences
Around the World: Proceedings of the 34th Annual Conference of the
Cognitive Science Society (pp. 96-101). Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society Beaman,
C. P., Marsh, J. E., & Jones, D. M. (2012). Analyzing the
meaning of background speech is obligatory, distraction by meaning is not. Euronoise 2012, Prague (pp. 648-653)
(Invited submission). Menezes, A.,
Tetlow, R.M., Beaman, C.P., Cripps, A., Bouchlaghem, D., & Buswell, R.
(2012) Assessing the impact of occupant behaviour on the electricity
consumption for lighting and small power in office buildings. In: AEC2012, 7th International
Conference on Innovation in Architecture, Engineering and Construction.
Sao Paulo, Brazil. Beaman, C. P., Smith, P. T.
& McCloy, R. (2010). Less-is-more effects in knowledge-based heuristic
inference. In: S. Ohlsson & R. Catrambone (Eds). Cognition in Flux: Proceedings of the 32nd Annual
Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 1014-1019). Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society. Beaman, C. P., & Röer, J.
P. (2009). Learning and failing to
learn within immediate memory. In: N. Taatgen & H. van Rijn (Ed.s) Proceedings
of the 31st Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society. Austin, TX: Cognitive
Science Society. Beaman, C. P., Neath, I., & Surprenant, A. M. (2007).
In: D.
S. McNamara & J. G. Trafton (Eds.), Phonological similarity effects without a phonological store: An
individual differences model. Proceedings of the 29th Annual Conference of
the Cognitive Science Society.
(pp 89-94). Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society. [Download] Frosch, C., Beaman,
C. P., & McCloy, R. (2007). Deciding the price of fame. In: D. S. McNamara
& J. G. Trafton (Eds.), Proceedings of the
29th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society. (pp 1001-1005). Austin,
TX: Cognitive Science Society. [Download] Beaman, C. P., McCloy, R., & Smith, P. T. (2006). When does ignorance
make us smart? Additional factors guiding heuristic inference. In: R. Sun
& N. Miyake (Eds.), Proceedings of the 28th Annual Conference of the
Cognitive Science Society, (pp.
54-58). Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society. (Winner
of the 2006 Cognitive Science Society prize for best high-level cognition
model) [Download] McCloy, R., Beaman, C. P., & Goddard, K.
(2006). Rich and famous: Recognition-based judgment in the Sunday Times
rich list. In: R. Sun & N. Miyake (Eds.) Proceedings of the 28th
Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society. (pp. 1801-1805). Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society. [Download] McCloy, R. & Beaman, C. P. (2005). Problem
structure and format in training conditional and cumulative risk judgments.
In: B.G. Bara, L. Barsalou, & M. Bucciarelli (Eds.), Proceedings of the 27th Annual Conference of the
Cognitive Science Society. (pp. 1449-1454). Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society. McCloy, R. & Beaman, C. P. (2004). The recognition heuristic: Fast and frugal
but not as simple as it seems. In: K. Forbus, D. Gentner, & T. Regier
(Ed.s). Proceedings of the 26th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science
Society. (pp 933-937). Austin,
TX: Cognitive Science Society. Beaman, C. P. (2000). Computational explorations of the
irrelevant sound effect in serial short-term memory. In: L. R. Gleitman &
A. K. Joshi (Ed.s). Proceedings of the 22nd Annual Conference of the
Cognitive Science Society. (pp. 37-41). Austin, TX: Cognitive Science
Society. Beaman, C. P., & Morton, J. (1998). Modelling memory-updating
in 3- and 4-year olds. In: F. E. Ritter & R. M. Young (Ed.s) Cognitive
Modelling II. Nottingham: Nottingham University Press. pp. 30-35. Copyright disclaimer: Documents posted on this web site are
provided as a means of ensuring timely dissemination of scholarly and
technical work on a noncommercial basis. It is understood that anyone
accessing these documents does so only for their own personal use and will
not repost, reproduce or otherwise disseminate these documents without prior
permission from the copyright holders. Current & Ongoing Work (email
me for details):
Beaman, C. P. Cognitive consistency
within a society of mind Beaman, C. P. Interesting
and rewarding aspects of the problem-space. Frosch, C., McCloy, R., Beaman,
C. P. & Goddard, K. Time to decide Parmentier, F. B. R., Elford, G., & Beaman, C. P. Varying content, not timing, of irrelevant speech stimuli disrupts verbal serial memory. Riddell, P. M., Beaman, C. P., & Gibbons, W. Discriminating visual from phonological noise as determinants of reading difficulty. Research supported by: AECOM, British Academy,
Economic & Social Research Council, Engineering & Physical Science
Research Council, Experimental Psychology Society, Leverhulme Trust, Nuffield
Foundation, Royal Society,
Wellcome Trust. Current Grants: Jones, D. M., & Beaman, C.
P. (2009-2013). Auditory distraction
during semantic processing: A process-oriented view. ESRC grant ES/G027706/1, £392,512 Other Activities: Society Membership British Psychological Society (BPS) – Associate
Fellow (2007-2012) Consulting Editor: Memory & Cognition,
Psychology Review Programme Committee: Cognitive Science 2011
(Boston, Ma., USA); Cognitive Science 2012 (Sapporo, Japan) Reviewer for the
following: Journals: Acta
Psychologica; American Journal of Psychology; Applied
Cognitive Psychology; Attention, Perception & Psychophysics;
Australian
Journal of Psychology Brain
& Cognition; Brain &
Language; Behavior
Research Methods; British
Journal of Psychology Canadian
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Revue
Canadienne de Psychologie Expérimentale; CHI; Cognition;
Cognitive
Development; Consciousness & Cognition European
Journal of Cognitive Psychology; European Journal of Psychology of
Education; Experimental Brain Research; Experimental Psychology
Human Factors Irish Journal of Psychology Journal of Applied Research in Memory &
Cognition; Journal of
Environmental Psychology; Journal of
Experimental Psychology: Applied; Journal of Experimental
Psychology: Human Perception & Performance; Journal of Experimental Psychology:
Learning, Memory & Cognition; Journal of
Human Evolution; Journal of
Memory & Language Memory;
Memory & Cognition;
Music Perception Nature
Reviews: Neuroscience; Neuropsychologia; Neuroscience
& Biobehavioral Reviews Psychological
Science; Psychology of Music; Psychonomic Bulletin & Review Quarterly
Journal of Experimental Psychology Scandinavian Journal of Psychology; Schizophrenia
Research; Stress & Health Funding Bodies: Biotechnology
& Biological Sciences Research Council, British Academy, Economic
& Social Research Council, Engineering & Physical
Sciences Research Council, Experimental
Psychology Society, Israel
Science Foundation, Leverhulme Trust, Natural Sciences & Engineering Research
Council Canada, Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research. Last Updated: 25th April
2013 |
||||||
|
|||||||
