Memory and Language

The Leeds Memory Group was established in Autumn 2003. We hope to develop the cognitive, neuropsychological and experimental strengths in the Institute. Our interests span language, memory, attention and executive function in groups as diverse as pre-school children, normal adults, older adults and patients with Alzheimer's Disease. There are four core group members, but we hope to encourage other researchers, both within and beyond the Institute, to get involved and use our facilities.

We regularly hold Cognitive Psychology Discussion Group meetings, which provide an informal means of discussing research plans, results and topical papers.

We are interested in and engaged in a broad range of research topics, in laboratory and clinical settings.

Ageing

The key common interest in the group is the psychology of ageing. The aim is to try to understand better the psychological features of the ageing process in terms of changes to memory, language and other cognitive skills. Recent projects include... Current projects include... (to be added)

Memory

Giving déjà vu a second look

"Psychologists from Leeds’ memory group are working with sufferers of chronic déjà vu on the world’s first study of the condition." An article in the University of Leeds Reporter, Jan 2006.

Language

Research includes study of the processes involved in word recognition and production, with a focus on the time-course of normal adult single-word processing speed. Catriona Morrison's work has looked at factors influencing processing speed, and it seems that the age at which words are learnt has the most important influence on their recognition speed. This age of acquisition (AoA) effect is now very well documented, although the precise role of AoA and the mechanisms by which it operates are not yet clearly understood.

Genetics and behaviour

A collaborative project between Catriona Morrison and researchers at the University of Wales College of Medicine recently examined the influence of a particular gene - the Apolipoprotein E gene on chromosome 19 - on cognitive decline. This study compared performance on a range of neuropsychological tasks, including measures taken from the CANTAB, in two groups of older adults: a 'normal' group, with no family history of dementia, and a 'pre-symptomatic' group, who each had a first-degree relative with Alzheimer's Disease. We are still working with the data, but there seem to be some interesting differences in patterns of performance between the two groups and between carriers of different ApoE alleles. The data were collected by a PhD student, Olivia Handley, and she has recently presented posters at meetings of the Forum of European Neuroscience in Paris and the Society for Neuroscience in New Orleans.
We are keen to continue and develop our interests in this domain, and would be interested in setting up new collaborative projects.

Key staff

Catriona Morrison, Chris Moulin.

Current postgraduates

Shazia Akhtar, Nick Almond.