Amanda Hickey
Associate Lecturer / PhD Research Student
Profile
Biography
- BSc Psychology, Bangor University, UK (2005-2008)
- PGCE Primary 5-11, London South Bank University, UK (2008-2009)
- MSc Developmental and Educational Psychology, UCL Institute of Education, UK (2011-2012)
- PhD Psychology, University of York, UK (2017-Present)
During my BSc and MSc I undertook developmental research projects interested in factors relating to various verbal and written language skills. In my BSc I investigated developmental patterns of the Attentional Blink and for my MSc I studied the effects of phonological and semantic interaction on verbal short term memory in typically developing children and children with dyslexia. My research and teaching career have heavily influenced one another, which has enabled me to experience as well as consider the real-world impact developmental and educational research can have.
Career
- Primary School Teacher, Mainstream teaching (various year groups) and Special Educational Needs Teaching, London Borough of Bromley, UK (2009-2017)
Departmental roles
- Developmental Research Group Coordinator
- Early Career Researchers Committee Member
- Sixth Form Conference Co-Organiser
-
Postgraduate Research Day Co-Organiser
- Outreach Volunteer
University roles
- Pint of Science: A Beautiful Mind Event Co-organiser
- College (Welfare) Tutor, Constantine College (2017-2018)
Research
Overview
Investigating factors that influence the generalisation of newly learnt grammatical rules in children and adults.
Projects
I am interested in verbal and written language development in both typical and atypical populations. My current PhD research is exploring typical verbal grammar learning and development through the learning mechanism ‘Statistical Learning’. Statistical Learning is the ability to extract patterns from the environment and my focus is on how different grammatical patterns interact in this learning process. I also investigate factors that may influence the generalisation of these patterns to novel words, in both children and adults. To explore this, I employ psycholinguistic training and testing techniques using an artificial language, which incorporates different grammatical patterns drawn from natural languages. I also collect data on a range of standardised test to investigate associations between performance on the psycholinguistic tasks and other verbal and non-verbal abilities.
Research group(s)
- Sleep, Language and Memory (SLAM) Laboratory
- Developmental Research Group
Collaborators
Teaching
Undergraduate
- Development & Language Tutorials and Marking (Years 1 & 2)
- Perception & Cognition Tutorials and Marking (Years 1 & 2)
- Social, Personality and Abnormal Psychology Tutorials (Year 1 & 2)
Postgraduate
- Co-supervisor of Development, Disorder & Clinical Practise MSc Research Projects (2018-Present)
Other teaching
- York Learning and Teaching Award, HEA Accredited Course (2018-2019) - Award Winner
Publications
Selected publications
- Hickey, A. J., Hayiou-Thomas, M. E., & Mirković, J. (2019). Grammatical Generalisation in Statistical Learning: Is it Implicit and Invariant across Development? Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, 41.
Paper Presentations
- Hickey, A. J., Hayiou-Thomas, M. E., & Mirković, J. (2019, June). Grammatical Generalisation in Statistical Learning: Is it Implicit and Invariant across Development? Paper presented at the Interdisciplinary Advances in Statistical Learning, San Sebastián, Spain.
Posters
- Hickey, A. J., Hayiou-Thomas, M. E., & Mirković, J. (2019, July). Grammatical Generalisation in Statistical Learning: Is it Implicit and Invariant across Development? Poster session presented at the Child Language Symposium, Sheffield, UK.
- Hickey, A. J., Hayiou-Thomas, M. E., & Mirković, J. (2019, July). Grammatical Generalisation in Statistical Learning: Is it Implicit and Invariant across Development? Poster session presented at the 41st Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, Montreal, Canada.
