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Dr Merryn Constable

Assistant Professor

Department: Psychology

Merryn Constable

My research bridges human movement and cognitive psychology to examine how social cognitive factors influence our interactions with other people and objects. I am also interested in other areas of psychology such as cognitive fluency, and embodied cognition.

I have held postdoctoral positions at the University of Toronto (Action and Attention Lab, Visual Cognition Lab) and the Central European University (Social Mind and Body Group). I completed my PhD at the University of Queensland.

  • Please visit the Pure Research Information Portal for further information
  • Affective compatibility with the self modulates the self-prioritisation effect, Constable, M., Becker, M., Oh, Y., Knoblich, G. 17 Feb 2021, In: Cognition & Emotion
  • Ownership status influences the degree of joint facilitatory behavior, Constable, M., Bayliss, A., Tipper, S., Spaniol, A., Pratt, J., Welsh, T. 1 Oct 2016, In: Psychological Science
  • Social gaze cueing elicits facilitatory and inhibitory effects on movement execution when the model might act on an object, Wang, X., Karlinsky, A., Constable, M., Gregory, S., Welsh, T. 31 Mar 2023, In: Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology
  • Relevant for us? We-prioritisation in cognitive processing, Constable, M., Elekes, F., Sebanz, N., Knoblich, G. 1 Dec 2019, In: Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance
  • It goes with the territory: Ownership across spatial boundaries, Strachan, J., Constable, M., Knoblich, G. Aug 2020, In: Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance

  • Please visit the Pure Research Information Portal for further information
  • Invited talk: Considering ownership and territory through the lens of social interactions 2023
  • Invited talk: Cognition in social spaces and Career Experiences as an Early Career Researcher 2022
  • Invited talk: Joint Action Planning in Handover Tasks 2022
  • Invited talk: Cognition in social spaces 2021
  • Invited talk: Self-Prioritisation as a function of context 2019
  • Invited talk: The influence of ownership in human-object interactions 2017

Josh Shepherd Coordination in Context: Optimizing task performance by balancing the cognitive needs of team members relative to task and environmental demands. Start Date: 01/10/2022

  • Education PGCert July 08 2022
  • Psychology PhD March 17 2014
  • Arts (general) BA (Hons) November 30 2010
  • Business Studies BA November 30 2008
  • Fellow of the Higher Education Academy FHEA


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