School of Psychology

Cognitive Psychology

Three research themes are current.

(i) Cross modal effects in cognition, including irrelevant speech effects, cross-modal (ear-eye) integration in perception, and priming across sensory modalities.

(ii) Short-term memory, including the development of a unitary memory model that incorporates studies of spatial short-term memory, articulatory suppression and other interfering tasks, together with memory updating.

(iii) Task interruption:  theoretical and applied studies.

Selected Publications

Hodgetts, H. M. & Jones, D. M. (2006).  Interruption of the Tower of London task: Support for a goal activation approach.  Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 135, 103-115.

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Jones, D. M., Hughes, R. W. & Macken, W. J. (2006).  Perceptual organization masquerading as phonological storage: Further support for a perceptual-gestual view of short-term memory.  Journal of Memory and Language, 54, 265-281.

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Jones, D. M., Macken, W. J. and Nicholls, A. P. (2004). The phonological store of working memory: Is it phonological and is it a store? Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 30, 3, 656-674.

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Nicholls, A.P., & Jones, D.M. (2002). Capturing the suffix: cognitive streaming in immediate serial recall. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition, 28, 12-28.

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Research Projects

2004-2006 AUSTRALIAN RESEARCH COUNCIL. ‘Binding in working memory’ ($135,000, with Dr. F. B. R. Parmentier and Dr. M. Maybery).

2005-2007 WELSH ARTS COUNCIL. ‘MindArt’ (£45,000 with Prof P. Halligan).

2005-2006 ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL RESEARCH COUNCIL. ‘Auditory attentional capture: Stimulus context and task vulnerability’ (£45,000, with Dr.   R. Hughes).

2006-2009 ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL RESEARCH COUNCIL. ‘Verbal short-term memory: Primitive or parasite?’ (£305,000, ESRC ref: RES-000-23-1626 with W. Macken).

2005-2006 ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL RESEARCH COUNCIL. ‘Attentional selectivity and semantic memory: Studies of auditory distraction.’ (£47,000, with Dr. W. Macken & Dr. R. Hughes;  ESRC ref: RES-000-22-1526).

2003-2006 MINISTRY OF DEFENCE. Designing integrated displays to support team Situation Awareness. Funded under the Data and Information Fusion Defence Technology Centre. (£225,000, with Dr. J. Patrick).

2006-2009  ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL RESEARCH COUNCIL. Now, where was I?  Cognitive models and support mechanisms for interrupted task performance. (£193,342, with Dr H. Hodgetts).

2006-2009 QINETIQ PLC.  Studentship: Auditory affordance: A link between perception and action. (£103,000, with W. Macken, K. Singh).

Banbury, S., & Jones, D.M. (2002) Office and call centre noise: Acoustic, cognitive and individual determinants of distraction. Funded by ESRC (£125,000).

Jones, D.M. (2002-2004). Cognitive streaming and air traffic management. Funded by Qinetiq Centre for Human Sciences (£130,000).

Jones, D.M., & Macken, W.J.M. (2001-2004). Organisational factors in serial recall: The role of perception. Funded by ESRC (£170,000).

Jones, D.M. (1998-2001). Experimental studies of cognitive streaming. Funded by DERA (£166,676).

Jones, D.M. [with ENGIN](1998-2001). Case studies of direct interaction with virtual humans in immersive design. Funded by EPSRC (£117,005 to PSYCH).

Jones, D.M., & Macken, W.J.M. (1999-2001). Task alternation as workload. Funded by DERA (£96,497).

Jones, D.M., Snowden, R.J., Howes, A., & Ruddle, R.A. (1998-2000). Human factors aspects of remote workstations. Funded by DERA (£150,800).

Jones, D.M. (1998-2000). Human factor evaluation critieria. Funded by the British Council (£2,043).

Jones, D.M. (1997-1999). Air human factors. Funded by DERA (£114,224).

Research Students

Joel Burton (Year 1) Linkages between auditory perception and action:  acoustic affordances for virtual auditory displays.  Funding: QinetiQ.

Christina Howard (Year 3) Continuously monitoring the features of multiple objects: limits on attention. Funding: School /EPSRC.