Professor Merideth Gattis
(she/her)

PhD FLSW

Professor of Psychology

: GattisM@cardiff.ac.uk
: +44 29208 70034
: Tower Building, 70 Park Place, Cardiff, CF10 3AT

: Media commentator
: Available for postgraduate supervision

I am a cognitive psychologist studying how interactions between people and their environments influence cognition and communication. I also study parenting cognitions during the transition to parenthood and infancy. I develop innovative methods to study cognition and communication in everyday environments using mobile and remote research tools.

I lead undergraduate and postgraduate teaching on research design and methods, including the philosophy of science, observational and survey methods, quasi-experimental and other mixed methods, and cross-sectional and longitudinal designs, as well as more advanced topics. I supervise research internships on cognition and development.

I partner with external organisations to address societal needs and to ensure that my research contributes to society and the economy. If you or your organisation think that our research could help with your work, please get in touch.

Developmental Science
Cardiff University Centre for Human Developmental Science
Neurodevelopment Research Network
Planetary Health Research Network

Date
Type

2024

Truong, Q. C., Gattis, M., Barber, C. C., Middlemiss, W., Au, T. and Medvedev, O. N. 2024. Applying Rasch methodology to examine and enhance precision of the baby care questionnaire. Journal of Child and Family Studies 33, pp. 166-178. (10.1007/s10826-023-02772-0)
Perra, O., Winstanley, A., Sperotto, R. and Gattis, M. 2024. Attention control in preterm and term 5-month-old infants: Cross-task stability increases with gestational age. Infancy (10.1111/infa.12574)

2022

Mascheroni, E. et al. 2022. The role of experience in parenting beliefs of British and Italian women during pregnancy. Infant Mental Health Journal 43(6), pp. 835-848. (10.1002/imhj.22014)
Ionio, C., Mascheroni, E., Landoni, M. and Gattis, M. 2022. Caring for twins during infancy: A systematic review of the literature on sleeping and feeding practices amongst parents of twins. Journal of Neonatal Nursing 28(5), pp. 305-311. (10.1016/j.jnn.2021.08.017)
Hoicka, E., Soy-Telli, B., Prouten, E., Leckie, G., Browne, W. J., Nurmsoo, E. and Gattis, M. 2022. The Early Social Cognition Inventory (ESCI): an examination of its psychometric properties from birth to 47 months. Behavior Research Methods 54, pp. 1200-1226. (10.3758/s13428-021-01628-z)
Gattis, M., Winstanley, A. and Bristow, F. 2022. Parenting beliefs about attunement and structure are related to observed parenting behaviours. Cogent Psychology 9(1), article number: 2082675. (10.1080/23311908.2022.2082675)
Ionio, C. et al. 2022. Monochorionic twins and the early mother-infant relationship: an exploratory observational study of mother-infant interaction in the post-partum period. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health 19(5), article number: 2821. (10.3390/ijerph19052821)

2021

Kucirkova, N., Gattis, M., Spargo, T., Seisdedos de Vega, B. and Flewitt, R. 2021. An empirical investigation of parent-child shared reading of digital personalized books. International Journal of Educational Research 105, article number: 101710. (10.1016/j.ijer.2020.101710)

2020

Gattis, M., Winstanley, A., Sperotto, R., Putnik, D. L. and Bornstein, M. H. 2020. Foundations of attention sharing: orienting and responding to attention in term and preterm 5-month-old infants. Infant Behavior and Development 61, article number: 101466. (10.1016/j.infbeh.2020.101466)

2019

Gerson, S., Weinstein, N., Paulmann, S. and Gattis, M. 2019. Infants attend longer to controlling versus supportive directive speech. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 187, article number: 104654. (10.1016/j.jecp.2019.06.007)

2018

Cameron-Faulkner, T., Melville, J. and Gattis, M. 2018. Responding to nature: Natural environments improve parent-child communication. Journal of Environmental Psychology 59, pp. 9-15. (10.1016/j.jenvp.2018.08.008)

2017

Cameron-Faulkner, T., McDonald, R., Serratrice, L., Melville, J. and Gattis, M. 2017. Plant yourself where language blooms: Direct experience of nature changes how parents and children talk about nature. Children Youth and Environments 27(2), pp. 110-124. (10.7721/chilyoutenvi.27.2.0110)

2015

Hilbrink, E. E., Gattis, M. and Levinson, S. C. 2015. Early developmental changes in the timing of turn-taking: a longitudinal study of mother-infant interaction. Frontiers in Psychology 6, article number: 1492. (10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01492)

2014

Winstanley, A., Sperotto, R. G., Putnick, D. L., Cherian, S., Bornstein, M. H. and Gattis, M. 2014. Consistency of maternal cognitions and principles across the first five months following preterm and term deliveries. Infant Behavior and Development 37(4), pp. 760-771. (10.1016/j.infbeh.2014.09.005)

2013

Hilbrink, E., Sakkalou, E., Ellis-Davies, K., Fowler, N. and Gattis, M. L. 2013. Selective and faithful imitation at 12 and 15 months. Developmental Science 16(6), pp. 828-840. (10.1111/desc.12070)
Over, H., Carpenter, M., Spears, R. and Gattis, M. L. 2013. Children selectively trust individuals who have imitated them. Social Development 22(2), pp. 215-224. (10.1111/sode.12020)
Sakkalou, E., Ellis-Davies, K., Fowler, N., Hilbrink, E. and Gattis, M. L. 2013. Infants show stability of goal-directed imitation. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 114(1), pp. 1-9. (10.1016/j.jecp.2012.09.005)
Evans, L., Tsai, P., Wu, D. H., Lien, Y. and Gattis, M. L. 2013. The dimensional arrow: agreement in directional mapping of dimensions among Mandarin Chinese- and English-speakers. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology 66(9), pp. 1729-1738. (10.1080/17470218.2013.763832)
Scott, K., Sakkalou, E., Ellis-Davies, K., Hilbrink, E., Hahn, U. and Gattis, M. 2013. Infant contributions to joint attention predict vocabulary development. Presented at: 35th Annual meeting of the Cognitive Science SocietyProceedings of the 35th Annual meeting of the Cognitive Science Society. Preceedings of the Cognitive Science Society pp. 3384-3389.
Winstanley, A. and Gattis, M. L. 2013. The Baby Care Questionnaire: A measure of parenting principles and practices during infancy. Infant Behavior and Development 36(4), pp. 762-775. (10.1016/j.infbeh.2013.08.004)

2012

Ellis-Davies, K., Sakkalou, E., Fowler, N., Hilbrink, E. and Gattis, M. L. 2012. CUE: The continuous unified electronic diary method. Behaviour Research Methods 44(4), pp. 1063-1078. (10.3758/s13428-012-0205-1)
Perra, O. and Gattis, M. L. 2012. Attention engagement in early infancy. Infant Behavior and Development 35(4), pp. 635-644. (10.1016/j.infbeh.2012.06.004)
Hoicka, E. and Gattis, M. L. 2012. Acoustic differences between humorous and sincere communicative intentions. British Journal of Developmental Psychology 30(4), pp. 531-549. (10.1111/j.2044-835X.2011.02062.x)
Sakkalou, E. and Gattis, M. L. 2012. Infants infer intentions from prosody. Cognitive Development 27(1), pp. 1-16. (10.1016/j.cogdev.2011.08.003)

2010

Perra, O. and Gattis, M. L. 2010. The control of social attention from 1 to 4 months. British Journal of Developmental Psychology 28(4), pp. 891-908. (10.1348/026151010X487014)
Over, H. and Gattis, M. L. 2010. Verbal imitation is based on intention understanding. Cognitive Development 25(1), pp. 46-55. (10.1016/j.cogdev.2009.06.004)

2008

Hoicka, E., Jutsum, S. and Gattis, M. L. 2008. Humor, abstraction, and disbelief. Cognitive Science 32(6), pp. 985-1002. (10.1080/03640210801981841)
Hoicka, E. and Gattis, M. L. 2008. Do the wrong thing: How toddlers tell a joke from a mistake. Cognitive Development 23(1), pp. 180-190. (10.1016/j.cogdev.2007.06.001)
Gattis, M. L. 2008. Diagrams are visual analogies. International Journal of Psychology 43(3-4), pp. 169-169.
Perra, O. and Gattis, M. L. 2008. Reducing the mapping between perception and action facilitates imitation. British Journal of Developmental Psychology 26(1), pp. 133-144. (10.1348/026151007x224442)

2005

Want, S. C. and Gattis, M. L. 2005. Are “late-signing” deaf children “mindblind”? Understanding goal directedness in imitation. Cognitive Development 20(2), pp. 159-172. (10.1016/j.cogdev.2004.12.003)
Gattis, M. L. 2005. Inferencing from spatial information. Spatial Cognition & Computation 5(2-3), pp. 119-137. (10.1080/13875868.2005.9683800)

2004

Gattis, M. L. 2004. Mapping relational structure in spatial reasoning. Cognitive Science 28(4), pp. 589-610. (10.1016/j.cogsci.2004.02.001)
Wohlschläger, A., Gattis, M. L. and Bekkering, H. 2004. Action generation and action perception in imitation: an instance of the ideomotor principle. In: Frith, C. D. and Wolpert, D. eds. The Neuroscience of Social Interaction: Decoding, Influencing, and Imitating the Actions of Others. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 131-158.

2003

Wohlschlager, A., Gattis, M. L. and Bekkering, H. 2003. Action generation and action perception in imitation: An instantiation of the ideomotor principle. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, Series B - Biological Sciences 358(1431), pp. 501-515. (10.1098/rstb.2002.1257)
Gattis, M. L. 2003. How similarity shapes diagrams. Lecture Notes in Computer Science 2685, pp. 249-262. (10.1007/3-540-45004-1_15)

2002

Gattis, M. L. 2002. Structure mapping in spatial reasoning. Cognitive Development 17(2), pp. 1157-1183. (10.1016/S0885-2014(02)00095-3)
Gattis, M. L. 2002. Imitation is mediated by many goals, not just one [Letter]. Developmental Science 5(1), pp. 27-29. (10.1111/1467-7687.00201)
Gattis, M. L., Bekkering, H. and Wohlschläger, A. 2002. Goal-directed imitation. In: Meltzoff, A. N. and Prinz, W. eds. The Imitative Mind: Development, Evolution and Brain Bases. Cambridge Studies in Cognitive and Perceptual Development Vol. 6. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 183-205., (10.1017/CBO9780511489969.011)

2001

Gattis, M. L. ed. 2001. Spatial schemas and abstract thought. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Gattis, M. L. 2001. Space as a basis for abstract thought. In: Gattis, M. L. ed. Spatial Schemas and Abstract Thought. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp. 1-12.
Gattis, M. L. 2001. Mapping conceptual and spatial schemas. In: Gattis, M. L. ed. Spatial Schemas and Abstract Thought. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp. 223-245.
Gattis, M. L. 2001. Space as a basis for reasoning. In: Gero, J. S., Tversky, B. and Purcell, T. eds. Visual and Spatial Reasoning in Design II. Sydney, Australia: Key Centre of Design Computing and Cognition, University of Sydney, pp. 15-24.

2000

Bekkering, H., Wohlschlager, A. and Gattis, M. L. 2000. Imitation of gestures in children is goal-directed. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology. Section A: Human Experimental Psychology 53(1), pp. 153-164. (10.1080/027249800390718)
Gattis, M. L. and Dupeyrat, C. 2000. Spatial strategies in reasoning. In: Schaeken, W. et al. eds. Deductive Reasoning and Strategies. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, pp. 153-176.

1998

Schnall, S. and Gattis, M. L. 1998. Transitive inference by visual reasoning. Presented at: Twentieth Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society, Madison, WI, USA, 1-4 August 1998 Presented at Gernsbacher, M. A. and Derry, S. J. eds.Proceedings of the Twentieth Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum pp. 929-934.
Gattis, M. L., Bekkering, H. and Wohlschläger, A. 1998. When actions are carved at the joints [Letter]. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 21(5), pp. 691-692. (10.1017/S0140525X98301740)
Gattis, M. 1998. Mapping relational structure in visual reasoning. Presented at: Mind III: Spatial Cognition - Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society of Ireland, Dublin City University, Dublin, Ireland, 17-19 August 1998.
Gattis, M. L. 1998. Mapping conceptual and spatial schemas. Presented at: Advances in Analogy Research, Sofia, Bulgaria, July 1998 Presented at Holyoak, K., Gentner, D. and Kokinov, B. eds.Advances in Analogy Research: Integration of Theory and Data from the Cognitive, Computational, and Neural Sciences. NBU Series in Cognitive Sciences Sofia: New Bulgarian University pp. 210-220.

1996

Gattis, M. L. and Holyoak, K. J. 1996. Mapping conceptual to spatial relations in visual reasoning. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition 22(1), pp. 231-239. (10.1037/0278-7393.22.1.231)
Bekkering, H., Wohlschläger, A. and Gattis, M. L. 1996. Motor imitation: What is imitated?. Corpus, Psyche et Societas 3(2), pp. 68-74.

1995

Holyoak, K. J. and Gattis, M. L. 1995. Review of Children's understanding: The development of mental models by G. S. Halford [Book Review]. Merrill-Palmer Quarterly 41, pp. 402-407.
Gelman, R. and Gattis, M. L. 1995. Trends and developments in educational psychology in the United States. In: Recent trends and developments in educational psychology: Chinese and American perspectives. Educational studies and documents Vol. 61. Paris: UNESCO, pp. 23-52.

1994

Holyoak, K. J. and Gattis, M. L. 1994. Implicit assumptions about implicit learning. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 17(3), pp. 406-407. (10.1017/S0140525X00035159)
Richardson-Klavehn, A., Gattis, M., Joubran, R. and Bjork, R. A. 1994. Intention and awareness in perceptual identification priming. Memory & Cognition 22(3), pp. 293-312. (10.3758/BF03200858)

Cognition and Communication

We often think of cognition and communication as abilities that exist within an individual, but every person is shaped by the people and environments around them, and so too are cognition and communication. Some of those influences are temporary - for example, without even thinking about it, you change the timing and prosody of your speech when talking to a baby versus a peer - but some are more durable. Social and environmental influences are more likely to have a long-lasting effects during infancy and early childhood, and furthermore, those effects influence other aspects of development, a process we call developmental cascades.

My research involves people of all ages, including babies, children and adults, and investigates person-environment interactions and related developmental cascades. I study how interactions with other people and shared environments influence cognition and communication and the longer term effects of those influences.

People and Nature

Several of our projects look at the relations between people and nature.

Generation Wild is a programme developed by the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust (WWT) to connect children living in economically disadvantaged communities with nature. Cardiff University is working with WWT to help them evaluate Generation Wild. This project is a collaboration with Dr Kersty Hobson in the School of Geography and Planning and Professor Wouter Poortinga the Welsh School of Architecture and the School of Psychology. This project also involves two PhD students: Nicola Parkin, whose work is supported by the School of Psychology, and Magie Junker, whose work is supported by a collaborative studentship award from the Economic and Social Research Council. You can learn more about Generation Wild here.

Making Space for Nature is an academic and enterprise partnership centred around the aim of working with local communities to co-produce plans for making space for nature. This project is a collaboration with Dr Matluba Khan in the School of Geography and Planning and with several other people and organisations external to the university. You can learn more about Making Space for Nature and download the final report for our work funded by the European Regional Development Fund here.

Moments of Change for pro-environmental behaviour shifts (MOCHA) is a Consolidator Grant funded by the European Research Council. I am collaborating with Professor Lorraine Whitmarsh, who leads the MOCHA project, and Kaloyan Mitev, whose PhD focuses on late adolescence as a moment of change for pro-environmental behaviour.

I also collaborate with Professor Thea Cameron-Faulkner on how natural environments influence communication between parents and children. You can learn more about our findings here. The Making Space for Nature project described above provides a valuable opportunity to replicate and extend our work on how natural environments influence communication.

Children and Parents

Parents are one of the most important influences on child health and development. Several of our projects evaluate how parents think about children, called parenting cognitions, and how children and parents relate, or to use a more technical term, how they interact.

Remarkably few studies have examined the beliefs that parents have about how to take care of a baby, particularly during the transition to parenthood and early infancy. This is an important gap because parenting beliefs are likely to influence how parents behave with their children, and thereby influence development. We developed the Baby Care Questionnaire (BCQ) to address the need for a valid and reliable tool to support research on parenting beliefs about caregiving during infancy. This work has been supported by Wellcome Trust, the National Institutes of Health, the Waterloo Foundation, and the Economic and Social Research Council. If you would like to use the BCQ in your own research, please email me for authorisation and supporting details.

An important step in our work with the BCQ is to understand whether it is a valid and reliable tool in different countries and cultural contexts. This is a big task and I am grateful to have numerous energetic and expert collaborators, including Professor Terry Au, Dr Carrie Barber, Dr Oleg Medvedev, and Professor Wendy Middlemiss, alongside many others. Our most recent work is funded by the Cardiff University and University of Waikato collaboration seed fund in support of the International Strategic Partnership between the two universities.

We are also using the BCQ in studies of parenting and child development following preterm birth. Preterm birth is very common and influences immediate risks as well as long-term outcomes for children. Preterm birth also affects parents and their interactions with children. Our research looks at the potential pathways between preterm birth and parent-child interaction. This work has been supported by Wellcome Trust, the National Institutes of Health, and the Waterloo Foundation. Collaborative partners include Dr Marc Bornstein and Dr Diane Putnick.

I am also collaborating with Dr Hana D'Souza to study the processes that support communication and cognition during parent-child interactions by using innovative research tools that allow us to study naturalistic behaviour in everyday contexts. Our PhD student Kate Mee uses head-mounted eye-tracking during parent-child interaction to examine the attentional and sensorimotor behavioural mechanisms that support learning of sign-augmented language. We are also currently recruiting for a new, fully-funded PhD studentship on dynamic sensorimotor patterns during parent-child interaction.

I lead undergraduate and postgraduate teaching on research design and methods, including an introduction to research design for Year 1 students and MSc students and a final year module on research methods in developmental psychology. Topics include the philosophy of science, observational and survey methods, quasi-experimental and other mixed methods, and cross-sectional and longitudinal designs, as well as more advanced issues such as diary methods and other remote research tools, and scale development and evaluation.

I supervise undergraduate and postgraduate research projects and research internships on cognition and development.

I am a personal tutor for students on our undergraduate degree. You can learn more about how my experiences as a student have shaped my approach to personal tutoring here.

Undergraduate education

B.A. Gordon College, Massachusetts, 1985; Psychology Magna cum Laude and Honours Scholar Fellow

Postgraduate education

Ph.D. University of California, Los Angeles, 1995; Thesis 'From Implicit Learning of Visual Patterns to Explicit Knowledge of a Dynamic System,' funded by the National Science Foundation, supervised by Professor Keith Holyoak

Honours and awards

Professorial Leadership Programme, Cardiff University, 2022
Fellow, Learned Society of Wales, 2016
Welsh Government Universities Pairing Scheme 2012

Professional memberships

Cognitive Science Society
Daylong Audio Recordings of Children's Linguistic Environments (DARCLE)
International Society for Infant Studies
International Society for the Study of Behavioral Development
Learned Society of Wales

Academic positions

Professor, Cardiff University School of Psychology, 2014 - present
Reader, Cardiff University School of Psychology, 2011 - 2014
Senior Lecturer, Cardiff University School of Psychology, 2007-2011
Lecturer, Cardiff University School of Psychology, 2002-2007
Lecturer, University of Sheffield Department of Psychology, 1998-2002
Research Scientist, Max Planck Institute for Psychological Research, 1995-1998

Committees and reviewing

Senior Member, Peer Review College, Economic and Social Research Council, UK, 2007 - present
Panel Member, European Research Council, SH4 2015 - 2022
Outcome Evaluator, European Research Council, SH4 2018
Scientific Evaluator, Marie Skłodowska-Curie Training Networks 2016
Scientific Evaluator, National Science Foundation, USA 2005
Scientific Evaluator, European Commission, 2004
Editorial Board, Parenting: Science and Practice, 2015 - present
Editorial Board, Psychological Science, 2012 - 2018
Ad hoc reviewer for numerous journals and publishers
Programme Committee, Cognitive Science Society
Programme Committee, Diagrams
Programme Committee, Visual and Spatial Reasoning in Design
Programme Committee, Imitation in Animals and Artifacts
External Advisor, H2020 Project MoDeL Modelling Developmental Learning
External Advisor, National Museum of Wales
External Examiner, University College London
External Examiner, University of Lincoln
External Examiner, University of Plymouth

I supervise postgraduate research on cognition and development, including research with infants, children, and adults. I am particularly interested in turn-taking in human communication and in interactions between culture and human development.

I have archival data from two longitudinal studies of cognitive and communicative development during infancy, and welcome applications from prospective students interested in working with archival data to investigate research questions about the development of cognition and communication during infancy and early childhood.

I also welcome applications from prospective students interested in contingent and responsive communication, whether in infants, children, or adults. I supervise experimental and observational studies of turn-taking, for example in parent-child interactions. I am particularly interested in how natural environments influence turn-taking.

I also supervise cross-national research on parenting beliefs about caring for infants.

If you are interested in applying for a PhD, or for further information regarding my postgraduate research, please contact me directly, or submit a formal application.

Current supervision

Nicola Parkin

Research student

Magie Junker